Hallelujah
by GreenWood Elf
Summary: The truth about angels is never that simple. And no one knows that better than Helen, a middle-aged, chain-smoking theology professor who used to be one of them...for a while, anyway. Michael/OC
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: **I came up with the idea for this one-shot about a week ago and since I love Michael nearly as much as I love Gabriel, I couldn't resist writing this story. This fic was ever so slightly inspired by the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah", although to be completely honest, it wasn't until after I had written the first draft that I thought of using the song as the overall theme. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Hallelujah**

_December 21__st_

The apartment was a studio. It sat above an Italian restaurant that doubled as a jazz club on Saturday nights. Michael could hear the music from where he was perched on the fire escape, the songs of Coltrane and other standards played by musicians from the local college. The throaty notes of an alto saxophone punctured the crisp winter air, sounding, for all the world, like the cry of a lost child. The tone of the instrument was unsteady, accompanied only by the soft legato of a slightly out of tune piano. Michael listened to each plaintive bleat of the sax and when it faded away, the night felt empty.

Abandoned.

Michael shut his eyes. Perhaps he should not have come. Perhaps he should not have dared to draw so close to the nearly imperceptible, but very real border between the celestial and the earthly. But tonight was a night of crossroads, a time that welcomed the unexpected, even as the midwinter twilight sprawled and spread over the horizon, rupturing the barrier between day and night. The world was aging. The world was dying. And soon the final death rattle would sound.

This was the end of things and Michael couldn't see it through without first seeing her. _Her_…the one he had wronged.

For an hour he had watched her through the apartment window, had seen her eat her dinner at the small, round kitchen table that doubled as a workspace for her laptop. And after her meal, when she had cleared the dishes and left them standing in the sink, when she had poured herself a glass of gin and sat down for a cigarette at that same lonely little table, he thought he saw the corners of her mouth lift in a smile.

"You don't have to stay outside," she said, her words coming in a billow of breathy smoke and tobacco. "You can come in. To be honest, I'd rather not explain to my landlord why there's a huge winged man sitting on my fire escape. Technically speaking, I'm not even allowed to have a window box out there."

Michael raised himself slightly, the muscles in his thighs protesting as he tried to straighten up. "I wasn't sure you would see me."

"After fifty years? I'll make an exception." She wasn't facing him fully when she spoke, but sitting at an odd angle, one leg thrown casually over the other as she stubbed out her cigarette in an ash tray.

"Has it been fifty years?" Michael felt like a fool for asking, but then again, she had always been wiser than him. The measurements of time, the calculations and dates and numbers, were unnatural to him. He knew only the present and in Heaven, the present encompassed all, past, future and the space outside of time. But it would be hard for her to remember that, she who was no longer in a state of grace, she who had been cast out….

"Fifty years," she said, uncrossing her legs as she stood to let him in. With a casual flick of her wrist, she undid the lock on the window and threw it open. "Fifty years, ten months, seventeen days and four hours. It's been that long, Michael."

His name. She had spoken his name. He did not know why, but for some reason, it made his heart break to hear it grace her human lips, to hear her mortal tongue pronounce the string of consonants and vowels in her smart New England accent.

Michael hesitated as he stood before the open window, assaulted by the sudden rush of scents that came from inside her dwelling. There was the odor of incense, not otherworldly, not the frankincense borne to a peasant child in Bethlehem, but the cheap, packaged kind she bought at the card shop down the street. Along with the unmistakable tang of sandalwood came the heavy smell of her cooking, chicken grilled in a saucepan with a little olive oil, some pasta with garlic, a crust of bread and a smear of butter. A plain meal. Simple food for a simple woman. And then there was her scent, her own, particular perfume that he remembered from when she had stood by him so many years ago. She had smelled of rainwater then, but now the odor had been polluted by her human body, by the stinking, mortal flesh that sat on her bones, by the blood that ran through her veins and the organs destined to rot in her gut.

As he stepped inside the tiny apartment, Michael almost recoiled at the smell. It was a perversion, something that offended him only because he knew he had had a hand in creating the offense, because he himself was just as guilty as she was…if not more.

She was standing before him now, pulling back her chair and pushing the table against the wall with her hip to give him some much needed space. Michael's large form, his folded wings, took up nearly all of her kitchen and she had to move into the living room to room for him.

"I had forgotten," she said in a breathless whisper that resonated with something like awe, "I had forgotten how big your wings were. How big…how big mine were…" But then she trailed off, looking askance.

Michael grimaced. This would not be easy. Perhaps that was why he had not come to see her in fifty years. Perhaps he knew all along how painful it would be, how exquisitely torturous. To see her like this now, her brown hair fading to grey around her temples, crow's feet at the corners of her blue eyes, a certain flabbiness showing in her stomach, made him want to weep.

And weep he did, a few, meager tears pooling in his eyes only to be brushed away by the side of his tattooed hand.

"This wasn't what you expected, I suppose," she said, crossing her hands over her middle. She was wearing a grey dress, something with long sleeves and a loose skirt that fell down to her knees.

Michael swallowed away his emotion, although he found he could not look at her for long. Instead, he trained his gaze on the poster she had on her living room wall. It was a picture of a Victorian-era woman on a bicycle, the caption beneath was in French, the words curling together in elegant script. He squinted, trying to make out the lettering. Downstairs, someone plucked away on the strings of a bass and the sound reached him in thrumming vibrations.

Michael's heartbeat matched the music and he emitted a shuddering sigh. "What do you call yourself here?" he asked her.

She tilted her head forward, offering him an expression that was so frank, so perfectly human that he nearly lost control. "As opposed to what you used to call me?" she asked. "Well, generally I go by Helen. The root is Greek. It means 'light'. Do you think that's appropriate? After all, didn't the Greeks have that fantastic story about Helen of Troy? She started a war because she fell in love with the wrong man."

Her sarcasm, though stale, disturbed him nonetheless. "Helen," he said, testing the name on his lips. And she was right, it was the not the name he had called her by, the name that came from the sphere of heavenly brilliance, the name off an archangel….

"Helen," he said, letting the smooth sound of the 'L' roll off his tongue.

She caught his gaze and held it. "Michael."

"I am sorry I did not come sooner," he said, the apology rushing from him in a great gust of air and wasted breath.

Helen considered him, her body shifting as she placed all her weight on her left foot. "Of all the things you should be sorry for, I'd say that's the least of them."

Michael dropped his gaze. She had defeated him already. It didn't surprise him. He had always thought she was the better warrior when she still stood with him in Heaven, crowned in glory, in undimmed, and everlasting radiance.

But even eternity was no longer definite. Michael knew this, just as he knew that he had wronged this woman, had wronged her soul and her heart and everything she stood for and all that she had ever meant to him.

And Helen understood this as well. And she would never, never let him forget,

"Why don't you sit down," she said, gesturing at the futon with the burgundy slipcover that sat against the back wall of the studio. "Have a drink with me."

Michael stepped to the side as she brushed past him, moving into the kitchen where she fetched a second glass and filled it with gin.

He hesitated when she held it out to him, watched as her fingers curled over the glass, her knuckles showing white.

After a moment, he took the glass from her, touched it to his lips and pretended to drink.

Helen laughed. "You thought I forgot, didn't you? You thought I forgot that we didn't need to eat or drink. Well, I'm telling you now, there are some things you never forget. And I remember everything, Michael."

"Everything?" he questioned, setting the glass down next to a bowl of flowers perched precariously on a low side table.

"Everything," she whispered, her hands falling to her sides, her body seeming to go limp. "It's harder that way."

Michael lowered himself carefully onto the futon, fanning out his wings so that the razor tips wouldn't puncture the soft fabric of the slipcover. Yes, he supposed, it was harder that way, harder to understand in a world that didn't, harder to see while amongst the blind, harder to live with the hymns of all the angels of Heaven ringing in your ears and the emptiness of your heart echoing in reply.

It was the condition of one who had fallen of grace. And Michael alone was at fault. Michael alone was to blame for her suffering. For her sordid, sorry state.

Helen poured a glass of gin for herself and lit another cigarette before following him into the living room. She sat on the edge of an old, leather chest, her body pushed forward at an awkward angle as she tried to balance herself comfortably.

"So," she said, jabbing her cigarette at him, "why are you here?"

Michael placed his hands on his knees and squeezed until the veins bulged. He could tell her. He could tell her now, could tell her of all the great, awful things that were to come. Would she be happy, he wondered. Would she be relieved to know that their Creator had once more lost His faith in mankind?

Or would she react as any human would when faced with the inescapable trap of mortality?

Michael looked back at the French poster, saw the smiling woman, saw her peach-colored cheeks and broad-brimmed hat decked with a gauzy veil and flowers.

No, he decided. He wouldn't tell her now.

"You have made a life for yourself," he said, stating the obvious as he glanced around the studio, noticing the polished planes of her dark wood furniture, the framed postcards she kept over a fireplace that no longer worked, the magazines that rested on the edge of her packed bookcase.

"I had to," Helen replied, her words dancing through smoke as she exhaled. "It's what humans do, Michael. They make lives for themselves. They grow up. They find jobs. They make money to buy food to eat which they later shit out. And they spend a majority of their short, empty days with their heads down to the ground looking at the cracks in the sidewalk because they can't be bothered to have a little faith and look up. It's the human condition. What a wicked game He contrived."

"Faith." Michael latched onto the word, a familiar thing in a dark, cold world. "Have you lost your faith, Helen?"

She smiled at him, both corners of her mouth lifting this time, her teeth showing even and ever so slightly discolored from her smoking. "Do you know what I do here?" she asked.

"Do? What you _do_ here?" He was perplexed.

"My job." She took a sip of her gin, her lips leaving a foggy imprint on the rim of her glass. "I'm a professor at the local college. I teach theology. My students think I'm an atheist. Isn't that simply the best joke you ever heard? If they only knew…if they only knew that angels can't be atheists."

Michael nearly winced. It was the first time she had openly acknowledged what she was…what she had been. An angel. An archangel.

And her wings had been the most beautiful shade of grey. Sea-foam. The feathers long, tapered, lethal….a perfect warrior.

"Are you," he started, but then stopped, swallowing away the rising emotion, feeling his throat constrict against his collar, "do you still love Him?"

"Love Him?" Helen had forgotten to knock the ash off her cigarette and the cinders fell to the floor, leaving a dark stain on her bright carpet. "How could I not love Him? I pray to Him every night. I told you I remembered everything, Michael. Well, I remember Him. And I wouldn't ever want to forget. _Ever_."

Michael's chest expanded, pushing against the metal of his cuirass. Acts of faith never failed to move him, whether they were small or large, the simple prayer of a little child or the dying plea of a martyr.

Helen, he thought, must be somewhere in-between the two.

"But I don't want to talk about Him right now," she said suddenly, waving her hand and sending another spray of ashes across the floor. "I want…I need to know…how is Gabriel? Did he know you were coming tonight?"

Michael felt his brow go smooth, the creases lessening as he tried to smile. "I did not tell Gabriel," he said, "but I know he misses you."

"Bet he never says it though," Helen murmured. She was sitting forward, her ankles crossed. "Well, I miss him too. Terribly. He was everything to me. You both were. I cannot…I cannot begin to tell you what the pain is like…the separation."

"You are not alone," Michael said, the bitter taste of memory coating his tongue. "We all feel it."

Helen exhaled sharply, laying her burnt out cigarette butt in a clay ashtray. "Gabriel. I think I admired him most, more than I ever admired you, at any rate. He did not even protest when I was cast out. He did not speak or plead for me. For him the grey did not exist. There was only right and wrong. And what I did, my sin, my taint, was wrong."

A tremor infected Michael's body and coursed through his limbs until it reached the tips of his ebony wings. It was horrible, this. To see her brought so low. To see her soul, once angelic, twisted and perverted in the flesh of a human being. And it had been his fault, his fault….

"What _we _did," he muttered, his fingers twitching as they clenched his kneecaps, his knuckles tightening. "The sin was mine as well."

"Humph." Helen's face became grotesque as she grinned, a hint of satisfaction making her look all too mortal, all too flawed. "It's nice of you to admit your wrongdoing now, but I'm afraid it won't do any good. Any _damn _good."

He flinched at her profanity, accustomed as he was to hearing her lips sprout only hosannas and hallelujahs. This world had reduced her somehow. Had made her crude.

"I don't sleep well," Helen said. She finished off her gin, pulled a face and placed the empty glass on a nearby side table. "And when I don't sleep, I think. A lot. Do you know I get winded walking up the stairs to my apartment? I used to be one of the greatest warriors in all of Heaven. I could fly for days without tiring. I could stand behind you as you led the charge into battle. I was the tip of the spear. One of the Seraphim. And now I have a layer of fat on my stomach and there's cellulite on my thighs and I'm getting old, Michael, _old_. Do you still think I'm beautiful now?"

What a question! Michael looked away from her, studied the patterns in the carpet on the floor, the trailing vines and blooming flowers and fan-tailed birds.

It was the root of his sin, the recognition of her beauty. She had been a beautiful angel. Their Creator had made her that way.

And Michael, yes, Michael had loved her, loved her not only for her beauty, but for her strength. Her devotion. Her faith. Her temperament, which was unwavering and almost unchangeable, had been much more akin to Gabriel's than his own. She shared his brother's stoicism, his power, his ability to look beyond any sense of personal desire in favor of duty. But there had been a chink in her armor. There always was. Even angels, archangels, were imperfect.

And Michael had been her imperfection, for she had loved him back. And they had loved each other.

Love. It had been love.

But she alone had taken the blame.

The apartment had fallen silent, the sounds of faded music reaching them both from downstairs. Faintly, Michael heard a woman singing, her voice raspy and echoing with a noticeable vibrato. Her words were obscured, but those that managed to filter over the clash of cutlery from the restaurant's dining patrons overwhelmed him with sadness.

_It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah…_

Yes, he thought. This was a night of crossroads. A night of realization. A night of reconciliation.

"I am sorry," he said, leaning forward on the futon so that he was closer to her, his knees nearly pressed against hers in the space of the tiny apartment.

She studied him for a minute, her eyes going narrow, the blue focusing until it became intense, like it had been when she had the light of Heaven in her gaze and the words of the Lord on her lips.

But the vision passed and she looked at him with an expression that was irrevocably human. "Yes, well," she muttered. "What does that mean? What does that mean to me now? You know, I can forgive Gabriel for not speaking on my behalf. It's his nature. I expect nothing less from him, just as he expected more from me. And I can be angry with Him, but only because I'm human and humans are always angry with Him. But it's a child's anger, a petulant thing. Not real. Not true. I love Him too much for that. But you, Michael, I'm sorry to say this, yes _I'm sorry_, but I can't make an excuse for you. When He asked you if you loved me, you stayed silent. And He knew the truth. I knew the truth. Gabriel and all the others knew the truth, but it didn't matter. It's the silence that counts. The denial. I've had fifty years here to think about it and I have to say, it's not my faith in Him that you have to worry about, but my faith in you. I don't believe in you anymore, Michael. I simply don't believe."

It was horrible. An acute torment. Something that would haunt him. Something that would wound him over and over and over again.

Michael wept. He wept freely now. And as he wept, the music from downstairs swelled. Rose and reached a crescendo.

…_and every breath we drew was hallelujah. _

Helen was unsympathetic. Running the tips of her fingers over the rim of her glass, she angled it so that the light from her floor lamp filtered through the crystal, throwing pastel-colored rainbows on the wall behind him. "Even though you came here tonight to see me," she said, "I don't think you understand what happened between us. You don't understand it at all. It isn't me He intended to punish with my banishment. I'm not the one who suffers so greatly. It's you, Michael. He has punished you."

There was silence. A perilous moment in which all the world seemed breathless and sound fell away and existence hovered on the brink of destruction, ready to plunge into nothingness. Into the static, unforgiving black.

And then Helen struck a match. And then the world righted itself. The sleepy notes of a slow piano solo followed. The patrons in the restaurant below chattered away.

Helen put a fresh cigarette to her lips and inhaled. "Sometimes I can't stand it," she said, speaking to herself and not to Michael, "sometimes I can't stand their music. Human music."

"Human," he echoed the word, his lips tasting of salt. "I hate what you have become."

"Really?" Helen looked at him, her exhaled smoke forming a halo around her head. "I thought you loved humans."

"I do."

"Is it because I told you the truth?"

"No." Michael pressed his fingers against the hollow space just above his right eye, applying pressure until he felt the throbbing agony in his head give way. "I knew the truth."

"But it hurts to hear me say it?"

"It hurts because I never said it," he replied. His tongue was dry and heavy, cleaving to the roof of his mouth even as he tried to find the words…the right words. "I will say it now," he managed at last. "I will say it for all the times I remained silent, for all the times when you needed my voice but I was deaf and dumb." A pause. A deep breath. "I love you. I love you still."

Her fingers twisted around the butt of her cigarette, crushing the paper until the tobacco shavings fell all over her skirt. Her eyes caught the light of the spilled cinders. "How unbelievably melodramatic you are," she said. "Well, damn you. Damn you, Michael."

It was a terrible curse-one he knew she didn't mean. Her reaction was instinctual, something born from a habit that had been ingrained in her very human mind.

Helen stood, abruptly, her glass falling from where she had left it on the side table and hitting the floor. Shards danced over the carpet, becoming entangled in the soft, threaded fringe.

"Fifty years," she muttered, her shoes crunching over the glass as she moved into the kitchen. "Fifty years. I should have known you'd come here like this one day. In fact, I'm ashamed to say I waited for it." She rattled the dishes in the sink, turned on the faucet with an angry twist and reached for a sponge. "But what does it mean? What can it possibly mean to me now? Do you want me to tell you that I love you as well? Is that what you came to hear?"

"No." Michael rose to his feet. "I came to warn you."

Helen froze, dropping her sponge into the basin of the sink, the hot water sending tendrils of steam spiraling into her face. She said nothing.

"I came to warn you," Michael repeated. "And I came because I wished to see you…before the end."

"The end. The end of what?"

"Of this," he answered, his voice taking on a sense of calm he himself did not feel. "He has lost faith in man. This will be over…this will all be over in a few days time."

Helen emitted a sound that could have been a sob, her shoulders hunching as she grasped the edge of the sink for support. "The end," she breathed. "Thank God, thank God it has come."

Relief. It was not an emotion he had expected from her. But as he studied her form, her trembling knees and limp arms and the way she hung her head, he realized that the primal need for survival did not exist in her, that there was still a part of her being that was angelic and welcomed the reckoning that was to come.

Michael did not know whether or not he should take solace in her joy, which seemed almost offensive to him, he who still had faith in mankind.

But this night, this strange space of time, was not about mankind or the world or the fate of a little unborn child he had been jealously guarding for some time now. This night he would give to her, the woman he had wrong, the lost sheep who had been forced to wander astray because he was a coward. Because he had sinned.

And seeing Helen now, seeing her relief, her happiness, hearkened something within him, some forgotten feeling of kinship and remembrance and recognition.

They were united still, beyond the limitations of human flesh and angelic spirit, beyond the perilous doubt that existed between them.

Slowly, he stepped into the kitchen.

Helen was scrubbing at her eyes with a dish towel, struggling to hide her tears and the streaks of stale mascara that trailed down her cheeks.

"Are you lying to me?" she asked, still not facing him.

Michael was only a few inches away from her and as he watched her shoulder blades move beneath the fabric of her dress, he recalled the splendor of her wings, now gone, now lost forevermore.

"You know I cannot lie," he replied.

Helen sighed, a soul-shaking, tremulous sort of sigh and threw her dish towel into the sink. "It's really going to happen, then," she muttered. "He is going to end this. I am happy. I am overjoyed. I could sing hosannas from on high and praise Him with every hallelujah and hymn. Because the truth is, I may not be as miserable as you, Michael, but I hate being human. I hate the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins and the marrow in my bones. I want it to end. I want to go home."

"As you should," Michael said. He raised his hand, wanting to touch her shoulder, but then thought better of it. "But do not expect me to await your return at the Gates. I am leaving."

She started, her whole body jerking as she whirled around, the hem of her skirt brushing against his knees, her perfume, the scent of rain, drifting past his nose as her loose hair settled around her tired face.

"He has asked this of you?" she questioned, her voice sharp, that of the professor, the scholar who knew more than her young students ever could, the mortal woman who had seen the beginning of time and now glimpsed the end of the world. "He has asked you to leave?"

Michael shut his eyes briefly. He did not want to do this to her, he did not want to cause her pain….

"No, I am leaving of my own accord. Against His wishes. He has given me an order I cannot carry out. I must stop this. I must try to restore His faith."

She stared at him, her jaw clenching, the smile lines around her lips tightening as she frowned. "Why?" she asked. "Why? You have never disobeyed Him. You have never wanted to. Michael, you're a fool. Do not do this. Let it be. Please. _Please._ Just let it be. He has a reason for this, I'm sure. He knows what we don't. You cannot question Him. You cannot…you cannot do this."

A worn laugh pushed past his lips as he looked at her, as he saw her wild desperation and frustration and anger, yes, anger. She was certainly not so controlled now. "I find it strange that you wish to give me counsel," he said. "I have asked nothing of you."

"Except for my forgiveness, which I won't give," Helen replied. She braced her hands on the sink, her arms extended behind her. "And as for my advice, it doesn't matter. You haven't learned a thing in coming here. You still don't understand."

And again, she wounded him. Michael bowed his head. Perhaps it was a lost cause. Perhaps he shouldn't have come to see her, but rather, let the memory of her, of her lost glory and her sea-foam wings and her love fade into oblivion along with the rest of the world.

But he was not like Helen. He still had faith.

Michael raised his hand, his fingers spreading as he moved to touch her cheek, to brush his angelic skin against her earthly flesh.

But she pulled away. She pulled away.

A sigh rose up within him. "This is the end, is it not?" he asked.

She would not look at him. "Yes."

He turned to go. Halfway out the window, he paused, catching sight of her standing in the kitchen, the water from the faucet still running, steam rising, her face obscured by the fog of it.

And for he moment, he almost thought he saw her as she once was. An angel. An archangel.

Michael found a smile for her. "When this is over," he said, "I will come back for you."

"Yeah," Helen said, tossing her head. "I don't believe you."

"Have faith," he said and then cast himself into the lonely, empty night.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so much for reading! In case you're wondering, I deliberately kept Michael and Helen's back-story vague because I thought you readers might like to fill in the blanks yourselves. ;) Also, there is the slight, slight, slight chance that I might consider expanding this one-shot in the future, although nothing is set in stone.

If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I cherish all feedback. Take care and have a great week!


	2. Part 1 Piano Man

**Author's Note: **Yes! I've decided to continue this story. To be honest, I've had the first five chapters of this fic sitting on my hard drive for a while, but I never quite got around to posting. However, since several of you requested some back-story for Michael and Helen, I just couldn't resist any longer.

The style of this story will be similar to that of my other fic "Cross", as I have been attempting to curb my long-windiness and create more direct prose. Therefore, chapters will be slightly shorter than my typical 6,000 word monsters, which should mean more timely updates. ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part One Piano Man **

It was the eve before Christmas Eve in a small college town in New England and Sam Hadley sat at his piano in Frankie's Restaurant, wishing he could get off work early and drive home before the snow started. He'd been playing piano at the restaurant, which featured a full jazz line-up on Saturday nights, for seven years now and although it wasn't exactly Carnegie Hall, he liked his job.

The management wasn't picky about what he played and the tips were good and the people were better. Of course, there was the occasional obnoxious customer or a waitress who never realized that the staff didn't pool their tips at the end of the day, but in general, Sam got along just fine with everyone. He had his favorites, of course. A busboy named William who was working his way through school and liked Coltrane more than Sam thought might be healthy. The old weekend bartender, Richie, who'd moved back to Maine last summer when his mom got Alzheimer's and he couldn't afford a nursing home. And Helen, the tenant who lived upstairs and taught religion at the college, or something like religion only it had a fancy name that Sam couldn't remember. Theology, was it?

This Helen had a smoker's cough and a whiskey voice and she wasn't the type of woman who looked great for her age, but rather, seemed to carry her fifty years around in the small, but noticeable lines of her face and the flabbiness of her stomach. She had light tobacco stains on her fingertips and the absolute worst posture in the world and liked her liquor hard.

Sam thought she was fantastic.

She was sitting at the bar that night, although she was only the patron in the place. The restaurant itself was empty, because the weatherman on local channel 67 had been promising snow all day and the college kids had run out of town early to get back home for Christmas or wherever the hell they went. Sam, who usually liked things quiet so he could actually hear himself play, was unhappy when he saw how lonely his tip jar looked sitting on the edge of the piano. His niece had been bugging him for a new cell phone for Christmas and because he was her only uncle, he figured he'd better oblige, although why a twelve year old needed a cell phone, he sure as hell didn't know.

No customers meant no green and he could almost feel how thin his wallet was, sitting empty in the back pocket of his corduroys. Sam looked up at Helen and saw her nursing her drink. He knew she probably wouldn't throw a couple of bills his way because she never liked his music, even when he left off jazz and played classical, which he thought would suit an academic-type like her. But still, he couldn't blame the old girl for being tone deaf and her company was about as good as it got on such a night, when the whole world seemed to be rushing by in smudges of snow clouds and empty tip jars.

"You look sad," Sam told her, smiling at the way she hunched her back and curved her shoulders and sat her elbows on the bar like a gargoyle. "Let me play you something nice, all right?"

"No music, Sam," Helen said. She picked at the edges of the napkin the bar tender had laid under her sweating glass. "I have a headache."

"What for?"

"I got fired today."

"No shit!" Sam swirled around on the piano bench, slapping one hand down on his spindly knee. He kind of felt bad for the old girl then, because she seemed as though she liked being a professor, or whatever it was she did down at the college. "I thought you had tenure or something."

Helen shrugged, her bony shoulders coming up beneath the fabric of her blouse like two rising mountains. "Screw tenure," she slurred and drained her drink, knocking the ice back against her teeth. "Screw them all, really…now that I think about it."

"Oh, come on now, honey," Sam said. He gestured at the bar tender, a new, grungy hipster kid from Boston who had one of those funny earrings that put round holes in your lobes and a scruffy, unkempt beard. "Give her a drink for me, yeah? What are you having, sweetheart?"

Helen dropped her glass down on the bar and sent it skittering towards the hipster kid with a flick of her wrist. "SoCo with a twist."

The kid picked up the glass and Sam noticed that he had one of his fingernails painted black. Not all of them, just one. Huh.

He let Helen get her drink and sip it for a while before he started prodding at her. Sam wasn't a naturally curious guy, but something like this seemed to be worth his time, something he'd never expect coming from a woman like Helen, who always seemed so dedicated to her students, sitting there on week nights _and _weekends grading papers.

"Can I hear how it all went down?" he asked, hating that he had to raise his voice because he was sitting so far away from her. Abandoning his post, however, was out of the question, and if Vietnam had taught him anything, you stayed put when someone told you to or you stayed dead.

"It's unremarkable, really," Helen said. She picked up her half-filled glass and pushed off the bar, sliding from her stool so that she could amble over to him with the grace of someone who was buzzed, but not yet drunk. "I told my students something they didn't like, the Dean threw a fit. Said it was 'vastly inappropriate' to quote him and that I was on thin ice already because my evaluations have been coming back poor at the end of each semester. Well, nothing is official yet, but I know what's coming. And it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, I suppose. The college has been going downhill ever since they suggested merging the theology department with the philosophy department. I won't stick around long enough to get blamed for that disaster, even though I usually get blamed for everything else. Michael used to do it all the time."

Michael? Who was Michael? Sam decided not to ask, because he wasn't in the mood to hear some sob story about an old boyfriend or ex-husband. Instead, he gave her a wide grin when she joined him on the piano bench. He slid over to make room for her, noticing, all the while, that she smelled something like the incense from church, the kind that the priest burned on holy days that would get into your clothes and sit there for days and days no matter how many times you washed them. Helen smelled like that tonight. Like that.

"Must've been something real bad," he said, not wanting to rub it in, but unable to stop himself. "What you said to those kids."

Helen set her glass on the top of the piano next to his lonely tip jar and stared straight in front of her, with a glassy, glazed expression that was more sorrowful than soused. "You want to know, don't you?"

"Definitely do."

"You sure?"

"Hell, yeah."

"Hell." She laughed into the palm of her hand. "Yeah, it's all about Hell. I'll tell you what I told them, Sam. I told them that the world was going end tomorrow and that they were all going to die and that they all, yes all of them, were going to burn in Hell."

Sam's fingers tensed and automatically, without thinking, he lifted them to the piano keys, the soft tinkling of the ivory drowning out the sudden, subtle unease he felt. That wasn't nice of Helen, he thought to himself. Not nice of her at all and she was nice lady.

Right? Yeah right.

"Now why'd you say a dumbass thing like that?" he asked, putting a chuckle into his words to show that he knew she was kidding and he wasn't about to take her shit seriously.

But Helen stared straight ahead of her, like her eyes were fixed on something and she had to keep looking at it or she'd fall apart. The lines on her face, the ones by her mouth, were more defined by the bright lamp Sam kept over his sheet music so that he could read the notes even when the house lighting was low.

"I'm sorry, Sam," she said and her voice was gentle almost, a sad, soft little thing that was unlike anything he had ever head before. No New England accent. No slur from the SoCo. No grating smoker's cough. "I'm sorry, Sam. But you're going to die too."

"What the fuck?" he said, feeling truly offended now. Maybe the old girl couldn't hold her liquor anymore. Or maybe she was on some kind of crazy mental trip or mid-life crisis or menopausal meltdown. But even though Sam knew she was just Helen, just Helen who lived in the apartment above the restaurant, who didn't look the best for her age and who smoked her cigs right down to the filter, he felt that something had changed, that she wasn't really Helen. Or not Helen as he had ever known her before.

"Like I said," she muttered, lifting her glass off the piano so she could finish her SoCo with a twist, "I'm really sorry. You're a nice guy. I hate to see it happen."

And God, she sounded sure. So damn sure. Like a real loon. That's what made people crazy, right? Not seeing pink elephants, but actually _believing _that the pink elephants were real.

"Just how do you know all this?" he asked her, even though he thought he should change the subject and hope that Helen would cut the crazy and act like she used to when she came down to the restaurant for a drink and sat at the bar and told him that she didn't like his music.

But that Helen was gone. Sam knew this, just as he knew that his niece was getting that cell phone she wanted for Christmas, because he'd already bought for her. He still had to wrap it though. Or maybe he'd just put it in gift bag with some tissue paper on top. Maybe he'd…

"Sam." She put her glass back down, dropping her right hand over his and squeezing his fingers until he felt all the blood rush to the tips. Her smile was dark, not Helen's smile, but something else, something that he could barely look at because it hurt. It hurt. "Sam, I was an angel."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks for reading! If you have some free time, please leave a review. I'd absolutely love to hear from you. The next chapter has already been written and should be posted in a week. Until then, take care and be well!


	3. Part II No Good Deed

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part two of "Hallelujah". In this chapter, we go back to the time when Helen was still an angel. To be clear, Helen and Heniel are the same character, Heniel being the angelic, non-human incarnation of Helen before she fell from grace.

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read the last chapter, along with **saichick**, who reviewed. I hope you enjoy this installment!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part II No Good Deed**

It wasn't until years later, that Heniel realized she should have never saved Michael's life. Although it seemed like a sin to admit it, she knew that he deserved to die that day, that he should have tasted the unknown pain of mortality and been rewarded for his secret desire to live as humans did.

It would have been a tragedy, his death. It would have been the greatest loss since Lucifer was cast down from Paradise. But it would have been, she believed, perfectly acceptable.

It wasn't until years later, that Heniel realized what she had done. It wasn't until years later, when she was wiser and wisdom told her that she shouldn't have saved Michael's life.

And she knew then, with the mixed blessing of belated hindsight, that he had deserved to die. She should have let him die.

The incident occurred when they were sent to guard the children of Israel during their flight from Egypt, a slice of time in Heniel's life that was otherwise inconsequential, although she would later recognize it as the beginning of the end. There were four of them who went into the desert that day; Gabriel, the Left Hand of God, Sariel, who had fair hair and was kind, and Heniel herself, who was the warrior, the very tip of the spear. Michael, the great protector of the Israelites, was the one who led them.

He brought them to a high plateau that dominated the otherwise barren flatlands. The sky itself was of burning embers, the color of a fire dying but not yet dead. Heniel was the first to alight and she landed on the edge of the plateau, a trickle of reddish soil cascading down the rocky side of the cliff. The sun above was swollen with the last of the day's heat and the blue sky of the evening promised an uneasy night, a night of temptation. It was the first time, the first time in ages, that Heniel found she did not trust herself.

Michael landed on the cliff some few feet away from her, the distance between them measured, calculated. He was soon joined by Gabriel and Sariel, the other half of their small party.

Heniel had her back to them and she looked out over the red foothills, over the wilds of Judea and she wondered how mankind could love such a place that to her eyes was wretchedly inhospitable. The winds that blew were hot and gritty sand stung the flesh and life itself seemed shrunken, burned away by the tinder of the unforgiving sun.

Heniel removed her sword from its sheath, letting the blade drag along the ground. The pointed tip made serpentine patterns in the stony soil around her feet. She disliked the sudden feeling a peril that rose up within her and she wondered why these little men mattered so much, so very much to her Father.

A small part of her, she realized, was even jealous.

"Where have you brought us?" Gabriel was pacing fitfully in the center of the plateau and he threw his question at Michael, an accusation only slightly softened by familiarity. "Is this the place?"

"I am certain." The General's voice was a rough grating in the back of his throat, a warning meant to dissuade Gabriel's thoughts, which were always markedly sullen. "This is the place."

Heniel tried not to show her own doubt, but it expressed itself anyway in the tight frown she could not disguise. A storm was blowing over the plains and the world began to fall to ash. She turned away from the cliff, seeking refuge by Gabriel's side, content to be shielded by the bulk of his body.

"He is certain," she said, letting the larger angel sense her skepticism, hoping to form some bridge of congenial camaraderie between them. They had been something of friends at that time, before she had given him reason to hate her.

Gabriel's shrewd glance was obscured by raging gusts of wind and sand. He opened his mouth to speak, but the ground shook, the sound like drums, like a hollow rattling inside an empty skull. The ground shook again and the swirling dust parted. The ground shook a final time and Heniel knew enough to grip her sword tighter.

Gabriel looked at her quickly. "This is not the place," he said. "This is not-"

But his warning was lost when a wide fissure snaked along the rocky topsoil, opening a gaping mouth in the earth itself. A cohort of Lucifer's foot soldiers had been lying in wait for the paltry force of Archangels. Sariel, who was always keenly perceptive, was the first to see the cloud of sulfur, the first to hear the screaming, snarling howls of the damned rising in the carrion air of the desert.

There was blood on the stones of the plateau before Heniel realized what was happening. Sariel, who had been standing in the rear, uttered a low, moaning cry and reeled back. Her calf had been sliced open by a Hell-forged blade and Michael was at her side, slaying those that he could until the wave of demon bodies overwhelmed him.

Vaguely, Heniel was aware of the whirring ring of Gabriel's mace as it arced through the air and her own sword was in her hands, the metal cold with the kiss of winter when it touched her roughened palms.

The surface of the plateau was narrow and the demons were unorganized, pouring all of their fiendish might into one fitful assault that left the angels scattered. They were trapped and they were pinned and Heniel found that she did not have enough room to spread her wings, that she would be crushed if she did not move, if she did not strike. But her sword was slipping in her hands and she could only thrust forward, thrust forward, through hot bodies and dagger-like claws that pulled at her limbs.

And there were shrieks and gurgles, gore spilled and wetting her boots, her fingers fisted in coarse demon hair, flesh split open until bone and marrow showed.

It took many minutes before she managed to break through the surge and although undeniably outnumbered, Heniel had thought they were winning. It was part of her naivety perhaps, that made her think that good would always triumph over evil. That darkness would fall and the light would rise, even when reality promised different. They only had half of the demons quelled when the tide was turned, when the legion gained the advantage, when the night seemed to steal away the day.

Heniel was standing above one of Lucifer's wretched foot soldiers and the tip of her sword pierced the leathery belly of the demon, her blade slicing through stinking entrails and bile. She had expected the creature to scream. She had expected him to curse her. She had expected him to die writhing and perhaps even beg for mercy. But he didn't.

The demon raised himself up on her sword, he pulled it through his flesh until his face was inches from hers and he laughed.

"Whore of Heaven," he breathed, each rotten word slithering through his jagged teeth, "Your General is already damned."

"Burn in the Pit!" Heniel spat, using the heel of her boot to push down on his shoulder and slide him off her blade. It was then that she heard it, that horrible wrenching sound, the crushing of bone to dust, the snapping of steely feathers. Someone screamed.

_Michael_.

Heniel turned and saw him through the haze. Three of the legion had beset the General and broken his wings. He stood now, teetering by the high edge of the plateau, unable to catch himself, unable to stop himself from…

…falling.

Michael disappeared over the cliff.

She only had an instant to decide and it was not enough, not enough to suit her hesitation, which threatened to freeze her in place. But Heniel dove off the plateau and into the open air. The world was a blur of color. Tints of azure and grey in the sky. Gold for the sand, that was hot beneath the sun. Weathered white for the stones which crowned the mountain.

It was a feast of light, a swirling, spiraling cloud of air and wind and the screams of her fellow angels who watched them plummet. In the fleeting moment before instinct told her to be frightened, Heniel enjoyed the sensation of falling heedlessly, her wings pinned behind her, the streams of air stinging the exposed flesh of her face. And she fell and Michael fell and she knew that the earth was calling to them, the unforgiving stone that would crush their bones and eagerly lap up the last of their blood.

Blood, blood on stone. It was then that the terror came, pushing to the surface of her calm. Heniel saw Michael a few feet away from her, desperately trying to fly, to regain his balance. He beat his wings, the joints broken and snapping, the cartilage grinding. He tried to catch himself. He tried to grasp at the thin air that whistled through his open palms and dried the sweat beads on his temples.

He was falling and not flying. He was falling and dying. She was the only one who could reach him. Help. _Help…_

Heniel stretched out her hand. She reached through the clouds and the hot summer haze and he reached back for her, even as she dove closer, closer. But at the last minute the wind shifted and Michael caught hold of what he could, his fingers snagging the tip of her wing. And she was thrown off balance. His weight pulled her body askew and pain darted up her wing as the joint slipped from its socket. There was a frantic rustling of feathers and a few broke off in Michael's hand, but he held onto her, he clung to her as they both fell.

"No!" Heniel mouthed, the words taken from her throat by the rushing air. Her body slammed into his. Her shoulder cracked against the hard steel of Michael's breastplate and they became a helpless tangle of limbs. She struggled against him, she threw her weight backwards and pulled, but he would not let go, he was holding her, dragging her down…

…killing them both.

"No!" Heniel screamed again as she saw the ground suddenly rise up beneath her. "No, Michael let go!"

He didn't.

They both landed on the rising slope of a vale, rocks and sand streaming down in a chaotic avalanche around them. There had been a sickening crunch, a crack that rang in her ears and she knew what it was, she knew when she opened her eyes and felt only pain.

Blood streamed from both her nostrils. Her right cheekbone had been shattered and the skin around it was already bruised, swelling. Heniel tried to lift her head, but only managed to scrape her chin along the ground. Michael was lying next to her. One of his legs was thrown over her shoulder, still holding her down.

And yet his eyes met hers and Heniel wanted to speak to him. But when she moved her mouth, she felt only broken teeth and spit and foam that dribbled out onto the sand and stone.

Michael looked at her sadly. "I am sorry," he said, his voice drowned out by the sounds of the others, of Gabriel and Sariel flying down to meet them. "I am so sorry."

_You should have let me go_, Heniel thought viciously in response. _I should have let you fall…_

But her consciousness was ebbing, the tempting darkness of sleep encroaching. And before she could forget the world and Michael and the others, she realized that he still had a few of her feathers in his hand.

It wasn't until years later, that Heniel realized he had deserved to die.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>The archangel Heniel is very, very slightly based on the archangel Haniel (aka Anael, Aniel and Hanael) occasionally referenced in Jewish lore. Sariel is also mentioned as an archangel in some Judaic traditions.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please review. I really do appreciate any and all reviews I receive for this story. The next chapter has already been written and should be posted in a week. Until then, take care and be well!


	4. Part III Plucked Feathers

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part three of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to thank everyone who read the last installment, including **saichick **and **jokerfest, **who both reviewed. I do hope you enjoy this chapter! ^_^

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part III Plucked Feathers**

Michael had been almost certain that he was going to die that day. He had been almost certain that his soul, which he had been promised was immortal, would whither and with it his body, his broken body…

He fell and witnessed the glory of the sky rushing past him. He fell and was aware of the earth, which stretched out beneath him in an unforgiving canvas of stone and hard soil. He fell and knew that no one was going to save him, no one at all. And it was only at the very last moment that he saw Heniel reaching out her hand towards him. It was only at the very last moment that he dared to hope.

Michael flailed wildly, stretching out his arm until his shoulder was nearly pulled from its socket. He tried to touch her, to feel the slipperiness of her sweat-greased palm as she grabbed him. But his fingers latched onto her wing. Her feathers cut into the meat of his flesh and blood ran down his wrist.

They both fell then. Heniel and him. They fell and he was almost certain that they were both going to die that day.

And the fault, perhaps, was his.

Michael remembered little after the impact, except for her scream, which rang like an unwelcome death knell in his ears. A final wave of unendurable agony washed over him, pressing him deeper into the dirt and the rocks and then all was blackness. Indefinite space. Oblivion. It was some time before he woke and he was surprised when he woke at all.

"Were you dreaming?"

Raphael's voice reached Michael through the dark, a beacon of silvery words and legato tones that shook the sleep from his mind and from his aching body. He stirred, immediately aware of how delicate his bones seemed. His flesh was a silken shroud, torn in places, dyed with blood.

Michael opened his eyes.

Raphael's face hovered over his and he smiled, soft lines forming around his firm mouth. "Were you dreaming?" he asked again. His cool hands touched Michael's shoulders, easing the pain from all his tensed muscles strained joints.

"I was," Michael replied, his own voice inelegant, a harsh grating that resonated in his dry throat and hummed behind his narrow, clenched lips. "I dreamt of falling."

Raphael exhaled through his long nose, his gaze eternally benign. "And of broken wings," he added. "And plucked feathers."

His wry humor helped to shake the last of the lingering cold terror from Michael's mind.

"I was certain I would die," he said and in speaking, the notion lost all its power, becoming weak and tepid. He felt truly ridiculous then.

Raphael seemed to agree. "No," he said with a jovial laugh. "You are not dead, brother. But perhaps you hoped?"

And then he disappeared, lifting his hands from Michael shoulders and drawing away into the light, for there were no shadows to be found in their Father's house, no darkened rafters and gloomy corners and blackened halls. Only light, which streamed in through high, wide windows and seeped through the floors and echoed in the wind, which perfumed was with flowers from Eden. It was late springtime now and the lilacs were blooming.

Michael realized that he was lying upon his bed, although the place had a certain air of unfamiliarity about it. His mind remained on a mountaintop. On a cliff side. On a stone that had shattered his body when he fell from the sky, when _they_ fell…

He remembered Lucifer's legion. The ambush. The hot spray of angelic blood on earth's soil. Screams. They had been outnumbered. They had been wretchedly outnumbered.

"The others?" he asked at once, their faces so clear in his mind. Gabriel, his brother. Sariel, who was kind and always laughed. Heniel, the brooding warrior.

Heniel, who had been with him when he fell.

Raphael stirred, his movement heralded by a rustling of fabric and feathers. "Sariel's leg was slashed down to the bone, but she is healed. She will not even have a limp."

Michael swallowed, a burning knot rising in his gut, sending tendrils of fire throughout his chest. "Heniel?" he asked and he could only think of her eyes when they fell, when they both fell and she had screamed before the ground came up beneath them.

"Healed," Raphael said simply, "but as sullen as ever."

That brought Michael no peace. The heat in his chest had burned down to mere ashes, although the cinders still smoldered, leaving him restless…haunted.

_I am sorry_, that was the last thing he had said to her, wasn't it? _I am so sorry. _Something squeezed his throat, the tightness verging on suffocating. He had almost killed them both.

Michael wondered if she would forgive him, although he had reason to doubt. Heniel was very much like Gabriel, only twice as severe. She spoke shortly. She was rarely content. And she was (ah, he hated to be unkind!) a bit simple. She had a heart and a mind that were easily connected, that she did not rightly know the difference between. He did not think she would ever understand.

And he knew she would never forgive him.

For a moment, he felt a shadow of sadness, but it slipped away like smoke through his fingers.

"We were attacked," he said. Raphael was somewhere in the room and his sandaled feet pattered on the smooth floor, his robes sweeping across the stone. "It was-"

"Unexpected," Gabriel said, his tone that of muted thunder.

Michael lifted his head off the pillow, his muscles bunching. Pain trailed down his back, along his spine and to the very tips of his wings, which felt heavy, which felt…

"So much blood," Raphael interrupted. He approached the bed with measured step, Gabriel by his side. They were an awkward pair. Healer and Warrior. Protector and Avenger.

And yet Michael could overlook the paradox for the quiet comfort their presence brought. He was a small child swaddled in linen, all bruised flesh mottled with blood. All splintered bones and gasping breath.

He looked to Gabriel and tried to find some pity in his brother's hardened eyes. There was none and Michael was surprised when he felt shamed.

"You brought us to the wrong place," Gabriel said.

Michael chewed on his lip. He knew well enough not to feel offended by Gabriel's acerbic accusations. They were commonplace and he had come to anticipate, if not welcome his brother's astuteness.

"It was not intentional," Michael said plainly. He looked down the length of his body and saw the deep scratches imprinted on his arms and chest. Demon claws, he thought, were nearly as sharp as angel wings.

Gabriel pressed his lips together. His tense expression softened a shade. "I was worried for a time" he said, his sympathy still grudging, "You were thrown from the mountaintop."

"Yes," Michael said, recalling the treacherous rush of air around his body. "The legion-"

"They knew we were coming," Gabriel replied. "Lucifer cannot be denied his guile. His treachery." He spat out the last word, running his tongue along his teeth as if he wanted to get the taste of it out of his mouth.

"One battle of many," Raphael added. "Only our General was nearly bested this time."

Michael bit down on his tongue when the Healer lifted his right wing, pulling it out from underneath him and straightening the stiff joint.

"They broke your wings, brother," Raphael said lightly, although there was a sinister insinuation in his tone. "And they were quite deliberate."

"They were quite foolish," Gabriel said with a jerk of his chin. He had folded one of his heavy hands into a fist. "We slaughtered them, Michael. They are all of them back burning in the Pit. Lucifer, perhaps, will understand that he cannot benefit from such brashness."

Michael closed his eyes. He thought of blood…and Heniel's final scream before they hit the ground. "That is," he paused, "that is well."

The silence around him was thick. He was swathed in empty air, in the dust of memories which made him nervous. For the first time in ages, he found that he did not trust himself.

"There is one thing," Gabriel said at length, "that I do not understand."

Michael opened his eyes reluctantly.

"Heniel tells me you would not let her go," Gabriel continued.

Raphael muttered indistinctly.

Michael felt his heartbeat rise, bringing a terrible wave of blood to his pale cheeks.

"She said you would have killed her too," Gabriel added. His voice was oddly unsteady.

"Perhaps," Michael replied and said nothing more. He turned his head away until his cheek touched the soft fabric of the pillow.

His eyes felt as though they had been washed with sand and he could not deny what grew within him, the unease, the unpleasant throb, the sickly residue of something that had settled in his mind when he fell…when they both fell.

Gabriel touched his brow, the pad of his thumb calloused and rough on his skin. "It is over," he said and Michael thought he was trying to be comforting, but there was no balm in his words, only a question that had arisen and would remain unanswered.

Looking down his bare arm, he noticed that a bandage had been tied neatly over his right palm, the place where Heniel's feathers had cut into his flesh. He closed his hand, made it into a fist and clenched his fingers until the wound began to bleed again.

It was only then that Michael realized how truly frightened he was.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you have some free time, please do leave a review. I cherish all the comments I receive and would be entirely grateful for any feedback.

The next installment has already been written and should be posted shortly. Until then, take care and be well!


	5. Part 4 Blue Dress

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part four of "Hallelujah". We're back in the piano bar for this chapter, because this story will, in fact, have a two-track plot. While a majority of the chapters will focus on Michael and Heniel, every third chapter will return to Helen and Sam. Hopefully, things won't get too confusing! ^_^

As always, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read the last chapter and **saichick**, who left me a very kind review. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 4 Blue Dress**

"Sam," Helen said. "I was an angel."

The gravity of her words were off-set by the tone of her voice, which had a sort of self-satisfied trill to it that reminded Sam of a gloating child. But nonetheless, he felt his face grow warm when she spoke, as if he had walked out of an air-conditioned room into a roaring hot summer day. An uncomfortable sweat settled on his brow. He swallowed once, but didn't say anything

His stubborn silence clearly irked Helen, though. She sucked in her cheeks, her expression very much like a grimace except for the dimples that showed around her mouth. "So?" she prodded him.

Sam cast her a cautious, side-long glance, wondering if humor would be the best way to diffuse the awkward situation. Good old Helen, he told himself. She certainly wasn't serious about all this. She was definitely being the same sour old bitch she usually was, yanking his chain simply because she could, because she was the college professor with a fancy, framed degree and he was the minimum wage, scrape-by-on-tips piano player.

It was odd, he mused. Her arrogance had never really bothered him before. But now her smug superiority was influenced by a hint of quiet disdain, a mild acknowledgement of something that disgusted her, something about him.

It made Sam vaguely uncomfortable…considering he wasn't the one who believed he was an angel.

He glanced at her nearly empty glass of SoCo and forced a smile. "Last time I buy you a drink," he said, injecting a faint, fluttery laugh into his words. "You're more of a lightweight than I thought you were."

"Oh," Helen replied, her mouth popping open to reveal a set of teeth that were slightly yellowed around the gum.

Too much smoking, Sam thought and was glad he had never picked up the ugly habit himself.

"Would it be easier for you if I really was drunk, Sam?" Helen asked him. She was slouching on the piano bench, looking small and indistinct, but alive. So vibrantly alive. "Because you certainly know how to deal with drunks, don't you?"

Sam's heartbeat quickened just a fraction, sending a tiny distress single throughout his body. The conversation, he realized, had shed its light-hearted amusement and was suddenly heading for darker, more dangerous territory. He decided he wouldn't say anything else, wouldn't say anything all, because this was getting…this was starting to get scary.

And Helen seemed to sense his discomfort, a shark catching a whiff of blood in the wide, wide ocean. She sighed, deeply, looking entirely put-off.

"You're a tough guy," she told him. "And you find denial comfortable. I guess I'm going to have to hurt you, Sam. I guess I'm going to have to hurt you."

_Hurt me? _Sam didn't take the threat seriously, although it was nothing short of chilling.

Helen's hand was still wrapped tight around his and he felt all the blood rush to his fingertips, his knuckles beginning to ache as her cool palm pressed down on them. A small, rational part of his mind told him that he couldn't be rude, that he couldn't just yank his hand out of Helen's and laugh in her face. But at the same time, there was an even larger part of him that thought she was a fucking lunatic.

A real, honest to God, fucking lunatic. Who knew? Sam sure didn't. He'd always assumed, in that dangerous sort of way, that the people around him, the waiters and the bartender, the nightly customers and even Helen who lived upstairs, were generally grounded in solid reality. He'd always thought that crazy wasn't something you could hide, but rather showed up on your doorstep at the most inopportune moments like a nosey neighbor or an unwanted dinner guest. And Sam had known a few such unfortunate souls in his life, like his uncle who had a full mental breakdown when he was fourteen and a couple of guys from Nam who still waged a full-on war against something called PTSD.

Helen, quite frankly, didn't fit the profile. In fact, she didn't seem to fit anything, sitting there on the piano bench next to him with her coy little smile that didn't reach her eyes and her SoCo that still had a lime rind floating in it.

But appearances were deceiving, apparently. Good old Helen really had him fooled and Sam was almost sad about it. It was one thing to be deluded about life, but quite another to think that you were an angel. He felt very sorry for the woman then, and he let her keep squeezing his hand, because he thought she needed some grip on reality, which evidently was still slipping through her tobacco-stained fingers.

"Did you hear me?" Helen asked him after a minute. She blinked her eyes, her crow's feet disappearing when her eyelids flickered.

"Yeah, sweetheart," Sam said, surprised when he could only manage a weak whisper. "I heard you. But I think you should go upstairs, all right? Go up to your apartment and lay down for a while, you seem tired."

He had hoped desperately that he wouldn't annoy her, but he thought it might be best if she got out of his hair for a while. Sam was relieved when Helen kept on smiling at him. Her grin just grew and grew until he could see almost all of her teeth.

Strange, he thought, it almost looked like she was growling at him.

"Go and lie down?" Helen asked. She finally let go of Sam's hand and placed it lightly on her knee. The ice in her glass had begun to melt and one of the cubes made a low clinking sound when it sank down to the bottom. "Go and lie down, that's what you used to tell your mother when she'd get drunk every afternoon."

The chill started at the very base of his spine, somewhere along where his belt sat and traced its way carefully up to his neck. For some reason, he couldn't think of anything to say.

_Ma, go and lie down._

"You didn't want your little sister to come in from school and see her mother completely pissed," Helen continued on. She plucked her glass off the top of the piano, taking a sip of he diluted drink. "Beer was your mother's beverage of choice."

Sam jolted off the bench, his thigh smashing into the keyboard, creating a sound that was wretchedly discordant, but somehow fit the moment. "How'd you know that?" he threw the words at her like whip, wanting to cut deep, to ease the sudden, private pain she had dared to remind him of.

But it was impossible, Sam told himself. Because no one knew. He was sure no one ever knew. Not the neighbors. Not his teachers. Not even his sister Susan, who was blessedly naïve.

Helen didn't look at him, but he could still see a bit of her smile, her mouth tugged up at the corner. "The beer made her fat," she said. "And she'd been a pretty woman once, Sam. Very pretty. Do you remember that house dress she used to wear all the time?"

Sam's mouth went dry, like it used to when he first started taking his blood pressure medicine. Cotton mouth, the doctor had called it. He had a wad of cotton rolling around on his tongue.

"It was a light blue dress," Helen said. She let her fingertips dance over the rim of her glass in a movement that was almost seductive. "A light blue dress with little green flowers on it. Your mother bought it at the five and ten, although you'd never know it, it looked so nice, not cheap. At first, she only wore it for special occasions, like when your dad had his friends over from work or for Sunday dinners. But then after the funeral, after your dad's funeral, she wore it all the time. Every single day. And when she got fat, the dress didn't fit her right anymore. There was this one time when you came home from softball practice and she was sitting at the kitchen table and one of the buttons had popped off the front of the dress and you could see her bra hanging out. And you thought, Sam, you thought, _My God, my God I can't be seeing this…I shouldn't be seeing my mother like this_. That's why you were glad when you got drafted. That day right there, that moment. All because you saw your mother's tits-"

Sam wasn't thinking, he wasn't thinking at all when he shouted, "You go to hell, Helen! Go to fucking hell!"

His voice was loud and it carried, bringing the hipster bartender out from behind the counter, his expression quizzical. Sam clamped his jaw closed, trying to work past the paroxysm of rage and regain his usually cool temperment. Thank God there were no other customers in the restaurant that night, thank God….

Because he couldn't stop thinking of that dress, that horrible dress. Light blue with green flowers. And it had been pretty once. She had been pretty once…

He looked down at Helen and was stunned to see that she seemed remorseful. Her mouth was turned down, showing all the deep smile lines around her lips. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did I offend you?"

Sam was about to respond, was about to summon the very last of his grace and tolerance and forgiveness when she spoke up again. He heard a note of grim resignation, of unwilling acceptance in her gruff voice.

"You know," Helen said, "it was your mother who was the true offense. You realize that, don't you, Sam?"

And then she smiled at him. God, she just smiled. "Why don't you sit down?" Helen invited, patting the piano bench with her open palm, "because it's going to be a long night."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> For some strange reason, I kept picturing Helen as Hannibal Lecter in this chapter, perhaps because she is so viciously sly. Although I don't think she is a cannibal, haha.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. Feedback always makes my day. The next installment has already been written and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well!


	6. Part V A Moment in the Moonlight

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part five of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to thank all my readers, including **saichick** and **x XRoweenaJAugustineX x**, who both reviewed. In addition, I would also like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list so far. Thank you, guys! I truly cherish your support and feedback. I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part V A Moment in the Moonlight**

_It only takes a moment_, Michael thought, _to be damned. _The notion was never clearer to him than it was after the fall. It was if the violence of the plunge, the screaming wind, the pain of splintered feathers and broken bones, the fear in his heart and on Heniel's face, had pushed him to the point of quiet madness. And as he healed, as the bruises faded from his flesh and from his memory, he began to realize that certain marks were indelible. Scars on the mind. Brands on the souls. Whispers of insidious promise.

And what they promised frightened him, because it would only take a moment to be damned.

In the weeks after the ambush on the mountaintop, Michael recovered his physical soundness. He impressed Raphael with his vivacity and he impressed himself with his willingness to forget, his desire to heal.

But there was something in him now. A soft ticking. A taunting threat. A small tear in his contentment. It was the result of a worry that he hoped was unfounded, but grew steadily day by day, blossoming whenever he caught glimpses of Heniel, when he saw her move and breathe and live.

Michael knew very well that he could have killed her. And yet, the dark whispers insinuated, there were fates worse than death. He had not let Heniel go for a reason…because there was something, that indefinable something, that he had wanted from her.

And want was dangerously close to sin. To gluttony. Lust…

The fear rested heavily on his mind, weaving itself into his existence, coloring the moments of his life until he was certain that it had always been a part of him. It was present as he recovered. It lorded over his thoughts when he prayed. And it conquered him, feasted on his self-restraint as he strolled through the Garden with Gabriel at his side.

It was an evening of rare peace and he walked with his brother along the length of a stream. Water whispered over smooth stones. The wind was low and subtle, a mild rustling in the long-leafed trees that were always in bloom. Michael looked at their branches and thought of knowledge, of good and evil. He thought of Eve with the forbidden fruit in her hand.

_Yes, _he mused. _Only a moment. _

Gabriel moved at a lingering pace, his steps ponderous. There was a quiet sort of dignity to his expression, one that Michael used to find comforting. Although now, in the shades of cool twilight, he began to notice harsh lines of his brother's face, the unforgiving tilt of his mouth and strong jaw.

And for some reason, Michael doubted that Gabriel would forgive him if he knew the true cast of his thoughts.

_Only a single moment…_

"Humanity is dying," Gabriel said, his hulking form softened by the veiled shadows that fell from the moon. The air was still and soft and there was laughter.

Michael looked up to the sky and found that he loved the darkness. It was a discreet cover, a shroud for the heat that had risen to his cheeks. "You scorn mankind," he replied.

His brother nodded, his chin dipping down to brush the iron collar that circled his thick neck. It was a typical conversation for them, the easy flow of familiar words and concepts, of philosophies long held and examined, but never changed. No, never changed.

But Michael didn't mind. He could argue amiably with Gabriel. He could walk amongst the mossy paths and feel the grass beneath his feet. He could watch the glow of the moonlight and the silver shadows of the leaves and envy men for their fleeting lives, which made such beauty all the more precious.

_Perhaps_, he thought, _I am becoming jaded._

Or perhaps he was becoming too human.

"Men are weak," Gabriel said. He was a few paces in front of Michael, standing on a small rise above a vale. The land was open and green and on the valley floor, Michael could see the rest of the Seven. Raphael, who loved the stars and Uriel who flitted restlessly between the trees, his wings buffeting the air which was useless and flat. Sariel and Zachariel, who both had fair hair. And Heniel, who was most like Gabriel, but perhaps twice as sullen.

Michael watched them and wondered if they were at peace. Or perhaps they felt what he felt, that quiet ticking in the back of his heart, that nearly silent consternation that he would not have noticed, expect that he had noticed her.

And that was dangerous.

Michael turned away from the vale and away from Gabriel, fearing the moment, which was just a moment but enough to damn him.

"Something troubles you," his brother said, his voice raised slightly to indicate concern.

Michael eschewed the muted thunder of his words, which beat a warning in his chest like a second heartbeat. He knew he could not be honest with Gabriel, because in truth, he was not entirely honest with himself.

_Had he wanted her to fall? Had he wanted to hurt Heniel? Had he wanted to damn them both?_

His mind was careless and he had let it stray into realms of wonderment, posing questions that were only slightly blasphemous. It had been harmless in the beginning, as indefinite as a dream and not quite as discernible. But now he realized that the dream had taken shape. It had formed itself into matter. It had lost its gossamer fantasy and become solid, real, alive.

Alive in _her_.

And that was dangerous.

"Why are men weak?" he asked instead, hoping to deflect.

But Gabriel had a scholar's shrewdness. He trailed away from the edge of the rise, back down the lush, sloping grass until he stood by his brother's side. "Deception," he said simply.

Michael wasn't sure what he meant exactly, but it was enough to frighten him.

"Men," he said with half a laugh, "are deceptive."

And so were angels.

Gabriel shook off his deferral. His shoulders rose as he sighed and Michael thought he saw suspicion in his star-pale eyes.

The air around them was hot with summer. Michael felt the humidity kiss his cheeks and imagined lips instead of air. This was getting dangerous, this was becoming…obvious.

"Something," Gabriel repeated slowly, "something troubles you, brother. You seem…pensive."

Michael flinched, hating the word and the carefully crafted implication. Gabriel had a penchant for weakness, meaning that he could see it easily in others and never in himself. It was true, Michael thought, his brother seemed made of stone. Immovable. Permanent. Incorruptible. He envied him.

And envy was a sin, along with rage. Along with greed and lust. They were damnable offenses and it would only take a moment to be damned. He only needed to catch a glimpse of her in the moonlight, perhaps. He only needed to see her to be overthrown.

Because he had wanted to hurt Heniel. Because he hadn't been able to let her go then and he might never be able to now.

"You are still troubled by what happened on the mountaintop," Gabriel said, his assumption all too accurate.

Michael turned away from him, angered. And that was a sin too. Rage. Pride. Lust…

He realized then that he was going to have to have a talk with Heniel. Soon, preferably. Because Michael needed to know, he needed to feed the dark whispers, the storming thoughts inside him.

Was it possible…was it possible that she felt it too…

"I haven't thought much about the mountaintop," he replied, his words just skirting the edge of truth. No, he hadn't given much thought to the ambush, but what came after, the fall,the broken wings, a scream, that remained in his mind. That would always remain.

Gabriel switched his method of attack, abandoning his prying questions in favor of blunt force.

"Something troubles you," he echoed, his voice rising in baritone waves over the purling stream.

And Michael did what he thought he never would do. He lied to him.

"No," he said, uncomfortable with the way the word sounded on his tight lips. He moved away from Gabriel in the hopes that his voice would become lost over the distance. The fragrant soil and thick grass deadened his footsteps as he strolled up the lip of the rise. The valley was open before him, all dewy splendor and pastel softness, greens and grays and blues and the moon, which was silver. He saw them in the vale, Raphael with his stars. Uriel circling. Sariel and Zachariel, who were laughing. And Heniel, lingering by the far side of the stream. Heniel who was like Gabriel, but twice as sullen. Heniel, standing in the moonlight…

"Brother?" Gabriel was at his back, his presence persistent and questioning.

But Michael said nothing. He only looked at her.

It would only take a moment, he knew, to be damned.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so very much for reading! If you happen to have a free moment, please review. I would absolutely love to hear from you. The next installment is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Take care and be well!


	7. Part VI Merciless

**Author's Note: **Hello all! Welcome to part six of "Hallelujah". As usual, I would like to thank all my fabulous readers and reviewers, **saichick, Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967 **and **Jenny Joker**. In addition, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Your continued support is truly appreciated. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part VI Merciless **

"Heniel." There was only a slight tremor in his voice when he spoke her name. She had not recognized him at first, her mind quickly equating the weakness of his tone with that of a lesser being. But there was a phantom's echo of resolve in the throaty timbre of his speech. It reminded her of the sharp edge of a sword. Of wind. Of the hot, sandy stone that she had felt beneath her when she hit the earth. Without thinking, Heniel raised her hand to touch her cheek. The flesh was still tender and a thin scar lingered.

"Heniel," Michael called to her again and this time, there was no mistaking his presence. He had been waiting for her, tucked in some tight alcove in the battlements that overlooked the very edge of Heaven.

The notion threatened to overwhelm her, dragging a chill along her flesh, putting ice into her marrow. She realized then that she had been watched, followed, her privacy violated. And it was unfair. Wretchedly, wretchedly unfair.

Heniel turned on her heel, showing that she was irked. It was the only defense she had that remained intact, the promise of ill-esteem and annoyance. It cowed some, but not Michael, who's authority was natural. He bore it easily in the face of her malcontent.

He was standing nearby, directly behind her, flesh and feathers and soul. Heniel did not care for the way the long shadows disguised him. They carved hollow spaces in his cheeks and made his eyes seem hard.

"It pleases me to see that you are well again," he said, his sentiment perfunctory.

Heniel's lips pulled over her teeth. There was an obvious hitch in her gait when she approached him. It was a manifestation of the internal battle she waged within herself, the war between fight and flight and entrenched instinct.

"General," she said, her eyes on the smooth stones of the floor. The respect in her greeting was grudging. She wasn't enough of a fool to ignore the tension between them, that subtle hint of dissent and contention that had somehow set them apart. Heniel had known, a _long_ time ago, that she would never quite trust Michael. Her faith wasn't nearly as steady as his and when placed in his hands, it became unstable. The others knew it. Michael knew it. And she knew it. But it was unspoken now, a dreadful whisper that reached across her mind. Heniel marveled at how quickly her courage failed her…all because of him. _Him._

"I expected this," she said, savoring the calculated distance between them, which was fortified by her own obvious unease. "We owe each other something…after the mountaintop."

"The mountaintop." Michael dragged out the word just enough to make her squirm.

She ducked her head and took a nervous step back. Whereas Michael's authority was natural, so was her submission. Heniel liked to think that she knew her role well and she embodied it, not gladly, but agreeably. There was a rhythm to her life and to his. Michael the General. Heniel the soldier. Superior and subordinate. Leader and follower. A perfect balance. And she was only at ease when things were in balance.

But they weren't now and they hadn't been for a long time. Not since the mountaintop. Not since the wind and the rush of the air and the stone beneath her. Not since his hands, his willful hands, had pulled her down. Down. Down.

_Down…_

Michael dropped his gaze to meet hers, but for some reason, she thought he seemed bewildered. The wide windows on either side of him reflected tawny color, the sunset dropping hues of bronzed light against the backdrop of an otherwise soft evening.

Heniel chewed on the corner of her mouth and kept her hand just above her sword hilt. She thought she knew why he was there.

"Have you been avoiding me?" he asked, his chin dipping close to the iron collar that encircled his neck. In the muted light, Heniel thought she could see the faint, black scrolls that crept along his flesh.

_Michael_, she thought, _have you absolutely no mercy?_

Heniel hesitated. She glanced down the corridor and then out the window, where the sun cut cruelly into her eyes. Her closed expression, she hoped, would be enough to throw a veil over the desperation that climbed inside her like the treacherous serpent. An excuse. She needed an excuse.

"Gabriel has summoned me," Heniel said at length, her politeness stiffened with a soldier's brusqueness.

There was some truth in what she told him, her words not entirely polluted with a falsehood. A commonality of spirit often pulled her to Gabriel, unfurling into a friendship that was quiet, but loyal. Sometimes, when she was feeling fanciful, Heniel thought of him as her protector, her ally and unknowingly, he would guard her now.

But Michael suddenly seemed emboldened. "He can wait."

Heniel reacted to his challenge. She let her wings stir fitfully, hinting at her restlessness in small, yet noticeable ways. "Yes," she said at length. "I have been avoiding you."

"Direct," Michael replied at once. "You are very direct."

"I would prefer to be seen as hostile."

Her honesty was biting and it satisfied her. She wondered, vaguely, if it would be enough to frighten him.

But there was something of innocence about Michael, his virtue steady and blameless. He had a talent for making her feel like a wretch, and whenever she met with him, a fine layer of guilt would close over her soul until that she felt that she had sinned somehow, that she had violated her own sanctity, or his.

He was calm while he gazed at her, even retiring. It was unfortunate that absolutely nothing seemed to daunt him. Michael could do with a little vulnerability, Heniel thought. It would serve him well to realize what it felt like to be weak.

Like she was, sometimes.

"I think you know why I have come here," he said.

It was a surprisingly perilous statement. Heniel threw her weight around, shifted it from one foot to the other as she considered him. Did he think so little of her to guess at her intelligence? Perhaps she had been wrong about his virtue. It was turning into something very much like arrogance.

"The mountaintop," she said, "why didn't you let me go?"

When Michael didn't answer, Heniel felt her anger stir.

"If you should happen to fall again, I will not save you," she said, delighting in how strong she sounded, how sure of herself. But her good conscience had already been swept away into a consuming tidal wave of guilt. _Guilt. Guilt. _She hated her guilt.

Michael's eyes widened and for an instant, Heniel was lost to fear. It occurred to her then that she had always thought of him as dangerous. Why was he dangerous?

But Michael soon lowered his gaze and Heniel felt hope surge within her. Was he retreating already? Was he drawing away from her?

But she had forgotten, ah, she had forgotten how clever he was.

"It would be unnatural for you to hate me," he said. He paused, his hands dangling uselessly by his sides, his fingers stiffening. "I do not think you do."

Pain shot through Heniel's stomach, sending coils of nervous tension to wrap around her ribs. She took a deep breath and realized that she was choking. His arrogance was becoming more evident and she disliked his understanding of her, which seemed all pervading. How had he come to know her so well? Heniel had once felt that she was an enigma, suitably indecipherable. She had once felt that her aloofness and disregard, learned from Gabriel, had been complete. She had once hoped that she was safe, not from Michael, but from herself, because she too was dangerous.

Like him. Like him. There was a strong possibility, she realized, that they had that in common.

"You cannot hate me," Michael said, with all the patience of a tireless scholar, a mentor tutoring the errant pupil. "It is not in our nature to hate, but there is something else in you. I cannot help but think what it is."

There was darkness here. Heniel sensed it, the invasion of some permanent shadow, something that would dye her soul black and possess her. Her fear was growing, showing on her skin, on her face. Unconsciously, she touched her cheek, her fingers brushing over the hardened ridge of the leftover scar. She realized then that Michael had it in his power to hurt her. And he had.

"I thought," she said, her tone frayed and hopeless, "that you came here to apologize. What you did to me on the mountaintop, that was-"

"Unjust," Michael said. The air around him shifted, thickening with the scent of twilight, the heavy perfume of promised starlight. "And yet, it might not have been uncalled for."

Heniel recoiled from him, and from the night, which was ripe with discord. It came from him and invaded her. It was in each tremulous breath of wind. It was in the dark stains that spread over the sky. It was in her heart, a quiet ticking, the foundation of something between them that had suddenly become fixed, immovable.

"I was going to apologize to you," Michael admitted, now obviously struggling with himself, "but there remains…I cannot ignore...I don't know why I wouldn't let you go."

The newness of it all bewildered her. The territory was uncharted. Heniel felt then that they were both heading somewhere, moving heedlessly into a realm that she feared for its inscrutability. Time ran together, bleeding into her reality, which was suddenly obscured.

"I must see Gabriel," she said, all too eager to retreat now. She would gladly prostrate her dignity in favor of reprieve, of mercy.

But Michael, she knew, had absolutely no mercy.

He stepped forward suddenly, through the very last of the sunlight, through the dark and extended his hand. At the last possible second, Heniel turned, her movement frantic and she felt the tips of Michael's fingers glide across her wing.

Sickness devoured her, especially when realized how pleasant it was to feel him.

"If you want me to apologize, I will," Michael said. He quickly drew his hand away, but kept it close to his heart. "I _am_ sorry, Heniel."

Her lip curled and she saw, once and for all, the true weakness in his eyes. But it did not belong to him alone, because it was hers too.

"I have no desire for your repentance," she said, her words breathless. "Never again." She paused and glanced at her wing. "Never again, Michael."

It was over then, the moment falling flat, fading. Heniel pivoted on her heel, enjoying the briskness of her warrior's efficiency. But Michael wasn't finished yet. She feared that he would never be finished.

"Heniel," he called after her. She did not stop, but he continued to speak anyway. "I think you are more frightened than I am."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so very much for reading! If you happen to have a spare moment, please do leave a review. Feedback never fails to inspire me and I am always overjoyed when I hear from readers.

The next installment is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well!


	8. Part 7 House of the Rising Sun

**Author's Note: **Welcome to part seven of "Hallelujah". As always, I would like to thank all my lovely readers and reviewers, **Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967, saichick **and **leanne**. In addition, I would also like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. I do hope you enjoy this installment. ^_^

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 7 House of the Rising Sun **

"God," Helen sighed. "God." She stuck her hand into the pocket of her sensible black slacks and dug around, the fabric bulging over her knuckles.

Sam watched her, feeling the cold sweat on the back of his neck start to dry. His heavy sweater, the one his sister had knitted for him a few Christmases ago, hung like a lead apron off his shoulders. _Ma_, he thought, remembering how her breath had always smelled of beer and how her house slippers had holes in the heels. _Ma…_

After a moment of rummaging, Helen finally produced a pack of smokes and her lighter. "Mind if I smoke?" she asked, sticking a cigarette in her mouth, the slender, white stick bobbing along in time as she spoke. "I know you don't smoke, Sam, but do you want one? Come on, take one. It'll make me feel better." Helen held the pack out to him like she was some tough high schooler tempting a younger kid to sin.

Sam slid one of the cigarettes out of the pack, but ignored her offer for a light. Instead, he held the smoke in his hand, pressed it against his palm until all the tobacco flakes ran out from between his fingers. Like sawdust. It sort of felt like sawdust.

"I oughta slap that smart mouth right off your face," he said, his voice surprisingly calm, "for what you said about my mom."

It was the first time Sam had ever threatened a woman before and the first time he had ever really felt like hurting another human being. Vietnam had been different, of course. Being a soldier wasn't about having a desire to kill. It was all about a draft card and politics and what the world wanted, not him.

Helen placed the pack on top of his piano, next to her drink. Smoke curled up in grey twists away from the end of her cigarette, which flared red in the dim light. "I know, Sam," she said sadly. "I know."

He stared at her. He lost his mind to her enigma, to the cosmic mystery of this woman, the sour old bitch who had stains on her teeth and a flabby stomach and the wisdom of the universe in her eyes. Sam looked at Helen, he looked at her real hard and finally saw that he didn't know her anymore.

The distance in his eyes seemed to disturb her. Helen tapped the ash off her cigarette into her empty glass, just in time for the bartender to realize that she was indeed smoking.

"Hey, hey." The hipster kid actually came out from around the bar, his hand with the one black fingernail raised in protest. "You can't smoke in here."

"Fuck off, kiddo," Helen told him, as if she were doing him a favor.

The bartender reddened, the skin above his messy beard becoming blotchy. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," he said, but his authority was weak, wimpy at best.

Sam roused himself from his stupor. "It's all right," he found himself saying. "She'll finish this one and that'll be it. And you know, you really have to have a set of brass ones on you to come over here and whine about a little cigarette smoke, especially since I saw you lighting up a joint in the parking lot last week."

The kid didn't really know what to say about that. He tugged at the sleeves of his shirt, rolled the cuffs down over his wrists and shook his head in false umbrage. "I don't want to get fired, man," he said, but retreated behind the bar nonetheless.

Helen smiled up at Sam and her expression was grateful. "Thanks," she said, breathing smoke. "It seems like there are rules no matter where you go."

Sam nodded. He could give her that, at least. He could give her that.

"You know," Helen said, her tone conciliatory as she slid over to take up the space he had vacated on the piano bench. "I feel like I should tell you, I don't really hate all of your music, Sam. You're a damned good musician and there was a time you brought me to tears. That's no easy feat, making an angel cry, but I did cry. Once" She paused and put her cigarette to her mouth, a smear of reddish lipstick showing on the filter.

Sam was almost tempted to tell her how ridiculous she looked then, talking about something as esoteric as angels crying while she sat there with her stale makeup puffing away at a smoke. It was easy to recognize something of brokenness in her now and it softened him, reminded him of his mother. He was inclined to be generous towards Helen at that moment, if only because he pitied her. And pity was the worst kind of mercy. It was pathetic and he felt sad that somehow, Helen had turned into a fool.

Did she recognize it in herself yet? he wondered. Probably not, and it was better that way. The only thing more painful than delusion was catching that final glimpse of your sanity, seeing what you were and how far you'd fallen.

And Sam couldn't help it. When he looked at Helen, he thought of falling. Falling…_falling…_

Ashes fell from the tip of Helen's cigarette, floating down to the floor like polluted snowflakes. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, the side of her mouth crinkling in a private smile. "It was on a night a couple of years ago," she said, "one of those breezy, blue summer nights when the sun doesn't seem to want to go down and couples dine al fresco, drinking bottles of cheap red wine. I remember those nights for other things, though. For flying, mostly. Flying on and on into the horizon, into the sun… I miss those nights and I miss being able to fly, Sam. But on this night, I wasn't flying, because I was stuck here in a little table in the back corner, sneaking a smoke because I didn't want the management to kick me out. And I remember you started playing this song and a lady at the bar began singing along with you. It was a sad song and the woman, she had a sad, sad voice. I remember some of the words, something about New Orleans and the sun, but there was this one line…_Oh mother tell your children, not to do what I have done, spend your lives in sin and misery_. I'm not going to lie, Sam, that made me cry. I sat there with the ash from my cigarette all over the good white tablecloth and I cried, because you don't know. None of you do."

Silence. Sam could hear the bartender spraying seltzer water into a glass. The wind had picked up outside. It was probably snowing already, bringing in that vengeful Nor'easter the weathermen kept promising.

He didn't realize it then, in the quiet simplicity of the moment, but he was on the verge of something. Someone had turned his life upside down and was currently shaking it by the ankles. He was crossing a border and he wasn't coming back the same. Never. Never again…

"Know what?" Sam dared. He thought that he might be indulging her crazy fit, but the way Helen spoke, the rhythm of her words, had inexplicably drawn him into her web. It was like a dream, like when he used to ride the train home from work and close his eyes only to see paradise. But then the train would screech to a halt and he would wake up and realize that reality had always been close at hand, had always been there, but he had been in paradise for a minute.

What Helen was offering him now almost seemed like an escape. It was the fantasy of a child, but it was so damn attractive. After about a minute, he dropped back down onto the bench besides her. And despite himself, despite the world, which was solid and cold that night in New England, Sam began to dream. He began to wonder what Helen would look like if she had wings.

"I'm talking about sin," Helen replied, smiling grimly out of the side of her mouth. "None of you know what it is like to sin, to _really_ sin. I do."

"I always thought sin was the same all-around," Sam said, although now he sensed that his logic might be flawed.

Helen fiddled with the pack and offered him another cigarette. "You're curious now," she said. "You want to hear what I have to say, but you need to realize Sam, what I'm going to tell you will change things. It's not something meant for your ears. It's a secret…just like your mom."

This time, Sam took the smoke she held out to him, if only to cover for the inherent awkwardness of the moment. For a second, he felt as though Helen were really trying to apologize to him. She actually felt bad.

Sam tucked the cigarette behind his ear. "You've already told me half of it," he said. "You already said some shit about the world ending and about you being an-"

"An angel." Helen looked away from him, idly flipping the pages of his sheet music. "I probably should have been a bit clearer. I _was_ an angel. I'm not an angel anymore."

Sam rubbed his knuckles over his graying crew cut and waited for her to make the next move. When she didn't, he felt the need to prod her on and said, "So…you don't have wings anymore?" He realized then that he was an idiot, an even bigger idiot than her.

Helen laughed, because evidently, she knew he was an idiot too. "No, you're right," she said. "My back is quite bare. I used to have wings, though. Big, beautiful wings and I was beautiful too…ah. Did you ever hear of that movie, Sam? It's an old one…_It's A Wonderful Life._"

"Yeah, sure." Sam shrugged his shoulders, more conscious of his moving joints and bones now that he was wondering just how it might feel to have a pair of wings. "Jimmy Stewart was in that."

"Right and there's this fabulous bit," Helen continued. "You know, the one about an angel getting his wings."

"Every time a bell rings."

"Well, that's another thing you don't understand." Helen stopped rifling through his sheet music and put her hand on her lap a safe distance away from the shiny ivories. "You think an angel can _earn _wings. We might as well buy them in a thrift store for all you humans know. But I'm telling you now, you can't just get wings, Sam. You either have them or you don't. I used to have wings, but I lost them."

Helen paused. She dumped her burnt out cigarette in her glass, the embers sizzling a little as the melted ice quenched the last of the flame. Her mouth hung open a little, and God, Sam thought, he had never seen someone so sad in his life. Sadder than his mom, even and that was saying something. Helen was now half-slumping against the piano, her fingers curled over the lip of the bench to keep herself from falling straight off it.

Sam didn't know why, but he reached out and touched her, put his hand on the sleeve of her blouse in order to remind her that she was there with him, not off flying in one of her summer skies. He'd never touched his mom back in the old days. He'd never tried to comfort her.

_But maybe I should have_, Sam thought, wondering if pity wasn't as wretched as he felt it was.

"Why'd you lose your wings?" he asked gently, unable to keep at bay the feeling that he was encouraging insanity. Either that, or he was playing witness to some kind of miracle, some real act of God.

But Helen shook him off, roughly, her face taking on an expression that was too dangerous for Sam's liking. She stared straight ahead of her, as if she were looking at something ugly, something that he couldn't see, but he knew was terrible.

Just terrible.

"Someone made me a promise," Helen said, her voice low and crackling like stiff autumn leaves. "Someone made me a promise and I believed him."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>The song lyrics Helen references in this chapter are taken from "The House of the Rising Sun", a classic folk ballad famously covered by the English rock group, The Animals. Although there have been numerous interpretations of the song's meaning over the years, some suggest that the narrator is, in fact, a fallen woman, with the House of the Rising Sun being a metaphor for a brothel. Since Helen quite literally is a "fallen" woman, I thought the song would suit her.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave me a review. Feedback really does mean the world to me and I truly appreciate any comments I receive.

Part Eight is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well!


	9. Part VIII The Reckoning

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to chapter eight of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to take a minute to thank all my fabulous readers and reviewers, **Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967, saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. Also, I would like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you so much! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part VIII The Reckoning **

Heniel stayed away from Michael. She eschewed his sickness, which threatened to insinuate itself into her life. There was a vileness in him, a hint of the forbidden. And Heniel shunned all that was imperfect. At times, she found herself wondering if Michael realized just what he was doing to his soul, and her mind was filled with the most fantastic notions that could not be assuaged, even by her judicious temperance. It was easier, she decided, to call Michael mad. The solution was harsh, but simple, and Heniel reveled in its brutality.

She thought of him as insane. She gave him a disease of the heart and the soul and so rendered him powerless. But it was difficult, day after day. It was a challenge to maintain the assumption that there was something wrong with him and absolutely nothing wrong with her. Because sometimes, not always, but sometimes, she would feel sick too.

And madness was infectious.

Her usual habits shielded her from too much scrutiny. Heniel had always fit easily into the company of her fellow archangels. She was remarkably unobtrusive. Her heart was a fixture of obedience and like all angels who served the Throne, she rejoiced only in her devotion. Gradually, her soul settled, the questions faded away, unanswered, and she kept her faith. She kept it well.

But even when apart from Michael, his presence lingered. She attempted to forget the aberrant things he had said to her. She struggled to discard the memory of their fall, of the moment when all of her life had run together and bled into his. She tried to hide, from him, from herself, until the day came when she couldn't hide anymore. And it came. It just came.

It was Gabriel's steady companionship that finally shook it loose within her. Gabriel, who was both protector and avenger. He approached her on the battlements one afternoon and Heniel felt him before ever she saw him, his spirit vigorous, his strength reassuring. And she welcomed him with all her heart.

"I have found a nephilim," Gabriel said by way of greeting.

Heniel knew enough not to appear surprised, although his statement was mildly disconcerting. She offered him a bland expression. "Another?" she said.

Gabriel only nodded.

Heniel did not ask him to elaborate. She was not naturally curious and she accepted what pieces of knowledge were doled out to her. What she knew of the nephilim was appropriately limited. There had been a time, shortly after the fall of Adam, when several angels left Heaven to mate with humans. It was, according to Heniel's conscience, one of the greatest defilements, and the punishment for such a base deviance was just. The children of such unions, the nephilim, were destroyed in the Flood, their poison washed from the flesh of the earth until all was made new once more. But there was a mark on the world yet and Heniel did not think so highly of her kind to consider them above sin. There were continued occurrences, rare obscenities when an angel would fall and a violation would take place.

Weakness, she thought, was inherent. It shouldn't be, but it was.

And she was the scourge. The reckoning. Michael, after all, wasn't the only one without mercy.

Gabriel knew this. She saw it in his eyes, the way he appraised her. His judgment did not daunt her. She had nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing.

"I would accept your help," Gabriel said, "if you are willing."

Heniel had long become used to his ambiguity. Gabriel wasted words on no one and he left it to the listener to decipher his intent. She, however, had always considered herself quite adept at reading Gabriel. His stoicism enthralled her, and when she could, she tried to imitate it.

"You honor me," she said, flattered by his attention. She knew very well what was being asked of her and his offer was pleasing. Although Michael was generally counted as the Chief Prince, the mightiest warrior in all of Heaven, Heniel thought that Gabriel's judgment was shrewder. If she could ever be called worthy by him, how blessed she would be.

But when Gabriel looked at her that day, his normally piercing gaze diluted by the sharp sunlight that slipped over the battlements, Heniel almost felt that he was searching for something.

"Are you certain?" he asked, his mild hesitance just enough to shame her. "This task will not be-"

"I am certain," Heniel replied. "I wish to do this."

Gabriel nodded, a frown pulling his skin tight over his cheekbones. "It will beg for mercy," he said.

His words set her teeth on edge, but she denied herself the luxury of fear. "I have none," she muttered.

Gabriel stared at her, a shadow, a mere shade of admiration coloring his pale eyes. "Good," he said. "That is good."

* * *

><p>He guided her to the place where they would find the nephilim, a place in the world of man that was very near to a wilderness. Heniel thought it fitting that such an affront to both mankind and their Lord should live alone in shame. Exile was appropriate, and in her mind, entirely deserved.<p>

There was a wide river, the banks swollen with recent flood waters that surged vengefully against the silt. Heniel stood on the edge of the shore with Gabriel and together, they listened to the hollow clicks of the tall reeds as the wind blew through them. The air was moist, carrying with it with the smell of wet sand. Heniel tried not to breathe deeply. She kept her head down, away from the sun.

"I am glad to have you with me," Gabriel said, his large arms crossed in front of him, hands clasped. It was the first pleasantry he had exchanged with her and Heniel appreciated the effort. Most times, Gabriel's silence alone seemed like a gift and she was not greedy.

"Thank you," she replied. Her words burdened the damp air, reminding her of her inelegance.

But even when held up against Gabriel's eloquence, she did not feel quite so awkward as she did around Michael. There was a steady accord between Gabriel and her. An understanding. She asked nothing of him and he was tolerant towards her. Neither of them allowed for sentiment, and that in and of itself was a comfort. Heniel liked things calm. She liked things quiet. Michael, on the other hand, was the only one who seemed to prefer dramatics.

"I assume you understand why I brought you here," he said, lifting his shoulder ever so slightly to adjust the weight of his armor.

Heniel listened to him speak, his voice filled with a throaty resonance that reminded her of bells. Great, lofty bells. She took comfort in his words, which were steady, and her heart, which had been unsteady of late, slowed a beat.

"I do," she replied, glad to find someone who acknowledged her perception, which was too often dismissed as commonplace. Michael, she knew, thought she was simple.

"I would not have asked Michael to do this with me," Gabriel said. "Sometimes, he is too merciful."

And just as Heniel's heartbeat had settled, it rose again, a quickening tempest, a herald of unease that danced along her spine between her wings. She looked out over the river. The imperfections of the human world were obvious to her celestial eyes. She noticed a few reeds, their shafts broken, bowing into the water. There were flaws, too many wretched flaws.

"I never thought Michael was merciful," she said, giving enough of her opinion to seem interested. The trick, however, was maintaining indifference, chasing away the tell-tale blush from her cheeks while Gabriel looked upon her, his eyes bearing judgment and perpetual reproach.

"You have never been sent to kill a nephilim," Gabriel told her. "They are not demons, Heniel. There is a reflection of the angelic in them. You will recognize yourself in it."

_No_. She began to sweat, sickened by what she thought was an insinuation. The banks of the river suddenly seemed cluttered, the earth itself too small to contain the bodies of two archangels. Heniel struggled against the confinement. Her plight was private, solitary. She could not let Gabriel see, he of the wise eyes and the voice of bells.

_Bells._

When she did not respond, he began to press her. Gently, at first. Tactfully.

"You should not think yourself so lofty as to be above damnation," he said, his words punctured by the incessant swish of the reeds. "None of us are."

"I agree," Heniel said. She was feeling quite mercenary at the moment, her mind loosened by thoughts of battle. There was too much of the warrior in her to relinquish the instinct to fight, but she was tired. She was worn. And she wasn't exactly certain what she was fighting anymore.

"Not even Michael, our General, can claim to be immune to such wickedness," Gabriel continued. His phrasing was unforgiving and he looked into the sun as he spoke.

Heniel concentrated on the shadowed spot beneath his chin, just above his iron collar. She stared at the ring of metal around his neck. Restraint. It was all about restraint. And fortitude.

But Gabriel was clever and he was quick and a better warrior than she could ever be. Heniel did not have time to gather herself before he dealt his next blow and the force of it was devastating.

"Michael did not let you go when he fell," he said. "I am…concerned."

Heniel realized that her balance was disrupted. Her left boot had started to sink into the sand and her hips were off-center. Slowly, deliberately, she straightened, pulling her foot out of the muddy silt as she climbed onto higher ground.

"I did not ask for an apology," Heniel replied, "and he did not offer me one. I should say that settles the matter quite effectively."

Gabriel exhaled through his nose. "Do not be coy."

"Never," she said. Her face was of stone.

Gabriel frowned. And even in that moment, when she sensed his disapproval, Heniel still thought of him as her protector. She felt that he respected her, and if he didn't, he would think it beneath him to warn her. It was a compliment, really, although Heniel wasn't quite sure what she needed to be warned against.

_Her wing_. _Michael had touched her wing._

"I will apologize for him, then," Gabriel said. His tone was conciliatory, but Heniel felt that he was only trying to reassure himself. "I am sorry that you were hurt. That was unjust."

"But it might not have been uncalled for," Heniel said, echoing what Michael had whispered to her once before.

She wasn't sure, but she thought she saw Gabriel flinch.

"Yes," he said. A little line of worry creased his brow.

The reeds rustled, knocking together to create a discordant harmony that reminded Heniel of bones. She started and looked out over the river. A woman was approaching the bank a few yards away. She had a basket perched on her hip.

Gabriel sighed and for the first time, Heniel registered sadness in his stark countenance.

"Any angel who debases himself with lust deserves to be damned," he said.

Heniel did not hesitate. "I agree," she replied.

Together, they moved down the sloping bank, wading through the shallows of the river until their shadows fell over the woman. She was kneeling in the water, washing her linen.

"Nephilim," Gabriel called out to her.

The woman looked up at them both and Heniel was shocked, she was horrified to see something of the angelic lurking beneath her very human exterior. It was in the eyes, just in the eyes. Her heart clenched when she recognized herself. Gabriel, as usual, had been right.

"Please," the woman said.

She still had her linen dress in her hands when Heniel drew her sword.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave me a review. Feedback always makes me deliriously happy. Chapter nine is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well!


	10. Part IX The Missing Stars

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part nine of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all my brilliant readers and reviewers, **Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967, saichick, Rainyaviel, **and **Jenny Joker**. I would also like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you so very much! Your encouragement and support means the world to me. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part IX The Missing Stars**

Michael was patient, although he thought the virtue itself was unnecessary. It provided a mere cover for anticipation. It masked intemperance, _poorly,_ and it drove the otherwise sane to distraction. He himself had long given up on introspection, even though he knew Heniel thought he was mad. Insanity, he was convinced, could not be found within him, only the taunt of so many unanswered questions. Thoughts that drifted anchorless through his mind. Insinuations that were more definite than they first appeared.

Michael waited, for what he wasn't certain. He began to understand time as he felt men might. He constructed days and molded moments into his life. He became aware of all that moved around him, while he remained stationary. And he became aware of her, of Heniel, who ignored him, who shut him away and left him alone to wait.

Sometimes, Michael considered going to her. He felt that he was capable of indulging in what might have been cruelty. And he knew he would be able to hurt her again, as he had on the mountaintop. He knew that he could open her blindness up to sight, take her tongue and twist it until she would say what he was too frightened to utter. But somehow, her ignorance had conquered him. She had won. He had lost.

For a while, at least. For a time. Until he saw again and finally understood why he had waited, why he had demeaned himself with patience.

The look of surrender on her face was unmistakable. The pallor of her flesh and spirit. The lingering malaise. Michael's heart broke when he gazed at her, when he found Heniel searching for him in the evening shadows of the Garden.

The night itself was a charmed thing, an unlikely fog settling over the deep valleys. Michael thought he could drown in the mist and lose himself to the low-lying clouds. The smell, the touch, the _sound_ of the air promised something of the inevitable.

For the first time in ages, he felt his strength falter.

"Why have you come?" Michael asked, daring to offend her. She was, in a way, a fragile creature. A warrior who was flawed by her own natural weakness. The last time they had met, he had given her the name of her fear and sent her spiraling into despair, away from him and away from herself. But Michael was patient and he had waited for her to return. To him, she had returned to _him_.

Heniel was standing in the open night, away from the comforting darkness that came from the trees and the absent moon. She was not close to him, but close enough so that he could feel her terror. It burdened the air between them.

"I came," Heniel said, "because I am sick."

Michael accepted that. He nodded his head. "I heard that Gabriel took you with him to destroy a nephilim," he replied, unable to admit that he was jealous of his brother for claiming so much of Heniel's time.

His envy had no teeth, though, for he knew that her respect for Gabriel was blind. It was something Heniel had fashioned from her own deficiencies, a sort of wishful thinking that enabled her to believe that she could someday be like Gabriel. And although Michael was convinced that she wanted to imitate his brother, he was just as equally convinced that it was _him _she truly wished to be with.

Or was he misguided to even entertain the fancy? He would decide later. After he had laid his soul bare and watched it fall way. After he tried to destroy himself, but her most of all.

"Did you enjoy the duty?" he asked.

Heniel blinked, her eyes veiled, her gaze a pool of emptiness. "No," she said, "because I am sick."

"With guilt?" Michael offered. He was being too direct, he knew, but his honesty was punishment for her trepidation. He did not know why he wished to cause her pain. It was unjust. It was uncalled for. His stoicism slipped and he clenched his hands into fists, knuckles stiff and cracking.

Heniel's lips parted. The wind dragged a strand of hair over her brow. "There is a mark on my countenance," she said. "A deep scar. I think Gabriel has recognized it."

"You have lost control," Michael countered. "You are frightened of what is happening to you."

"I do not want your silent pity."

"Not silent." He was baiting her, drawing her closer. And she, he felt, wanted to be close to him. Michael wondered if he believed in fate. He wondered if this moment had been set aside for Heniel and him. He wondered if it was really his weakness that haunted them, and not hers. Perhaps she had never been weak, reason told him. Perhaps it was all a delusion.

"You deserve to be blamed for all of this," Heniel said. "And I think you did it on purpose. To disrupt. To cause chaos. I cannot forgive that."

A nervous smile made Michael's mouth tremble. There was something of misguided fury in Heniel's tone and bearing. She presented a tall, angular figure, her normally straight shoulders bowed, but her head was always held high.

She was baiting him as well. For some reason, that made him proud.

"I will never deprive you of your convictions," Michael said. He drew near to her, pressing his hand down on her forearm. It would be best, he knew, if he stopped talking around his sentiment, using only shallow words to guard what pieces of her he had kept inside himself.

Her gaze hardened with skepticism and she had the look of a lost child. "Gabriel knows. He suspects."

"What?" Michael pressed. "What does he suspect?"

He let his fingers trail down to her wrist, and then finally, her hand. The mist fell away, leaving only the silken shadows of twilight.

"I will not put a name to it," Heniel replied. Her hand tightened beneath Michael's. She was struggling with him…and with herself. "This is wrong."

"But you came and found me," he said, coaxing her with his voice, which was steady. The slight breeze had stirred something of fear within him and it fluttered about his breast, caged, trapped. For a moment, Michael was almost tempted to release it. Let it fly. Let it soar.

"I can feel your mind stalking my thoughts," Heniel said. Her eyes looked exceptionally pale in the darkness, as if her soul itself had somehow faded behind them and dropped away from the Garden with the last of the mist. "Ever since the mountaintop, ever since we fell-"

"Together," Michael added, although he knew it didn't need to be said.

Heniel shuddered, slipping her hand out from underneath his, flexing her fingers, the skin creasing over her knuckles. "I want this to be finished. I can…I can acknowledge the darkness between us and I came to you tonight because I wish it to be dispelled. We walk on the edge of things. We skirt the truth."

"The only truth that matters," Michael added. His palm felt cold without her touch. He rubbed it against his thigh. What had changed? he asked himself. Between them. Between himself and the world. Where had his faith faltered? Where had his devotion given way to this new, unworthy religion? The circle of his thoughts had long been broken, he realized and she lived in his every breath. Without meaning to, he had taken her to him, sometime during the wild rush of their fall from the mountaintop, when she reached out her hand, when he would not let go.

"You are right," Michael said. "This is my fault."

They stood in silence for a long while. The Garden concealed the fire of their shame until it was naught but cold, forgotten ash. The moon was high behind clouds of iridescent silver and rain-washed blue. Heniel raised her head and Michael was certain that she was searching for the stars, begging them to pull her away into the farthest reaches of Paradise.

The color drained from her face, from her lips. She was impermanent, no more settled than the shades around her. Michael feared that she would fly away. But if she disappeared, his prayers would no longer be tainted and the quiet ticking in the back of his heart might silence itself.

For a moment, he imagined them back on the mountaintop with the desert air pulsing around them, the sand hot and harsh, a rough caress. And if it had been Heniel, he realized, if it had been Heniel with her wings broken and falling, Michael would not have caught her. He would have let her go then, then…but could he possibly let her go now?

She was standing before him. She was lost and cold in the moonlight. And Michael knew he could end it then, end it now, give her back her life and restore his. But he didn't.

He was cruel.

Heniel understood. She raised her hand and ran her fingers over the rim of her iron collar as if to steady herself.

"The nephilim," she said, "screamed when I killed her. She looked like me…it was in the eyes. I saw myself for an instant and if you had been there, you would be frightened as well. You would be sick. I know what is coming, Michael and you are too selfish to stop it."

"You could leave now," he counseled, almost hoping that she was wiser than he thought and would heed his warning. "We could continue on this way, hiding from each other."

Heniel's smile was painful. "It would not last and if I am to have the darkness, I would rather let it surround me than live only in the shadow of it."

For an instant, the quiet ticking in the back of Michael's heart ceased. Heniel _was_ wise, he realized. And she always had been. It was his blindness, not hers, that had led them to this place.

"Say it then," he urged. The exquisite wildness had reached him, completed his madness, left him lost, but lost in her.

Heniel still would not look him in the eyes, though. She kept her head high and searched for the missing stars. "You think," she said, "that we are in love."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you happen to have a free moment, please leave me a review. I truly appreciate any feedback I receive for this fic.

The next chapter is currently being revised and should be posted in ten days. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


	11. Part 10 Funeral Song

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part ten of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to thank my dedicated readers/reviewers, **saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. Also, I would like to thank the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts. I do hope you enjoy this installment!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 10 Funeral Song**

Helen lowered the piano cover over the keys, resting her elbows on the smooth wood. For a moment, she looked like one of those old magazine ads, a sophisticated woman sitting at a bar smoking a cigarette, trying to seem classy while she gave herself lung cancer. Sam smiled a little at that. It was a private joke, something he could wrap his mind around and hold onto. A piece of reality. A reminder of the world as he knew it, which was starting to change before him. He wondered if he was brave enough to do this. Could he really sit there and listen to what Helen had to say? Would he allow himself to be taken away to a place he couldn't come back from?

Sam dropped his hands onto the knees of his corduroys. "You're now entering the _Twilight Zone_," he muttered, doing the best impression of Rod Sterling he could manage.

Helen surprised him with a laugh, high and loud. She threw her head back and cackled wildly, that hidden menace coming to life in her eyes even though she was smiling. "Please," she said, "I hate melodrama."

Sam shifted on the piano bench. He thought that was a rather odd thing for her to say, this woman of sorrows who grinned through her pain and showed him her teeth like a paranoid dog. The paradox was uncomfortable and it drove yet another shard of unease beneath his already tender skin.

Sam's mouth was dry and he looked at the pool of melted ice in Helen's glass, brackish now from the butt of her cigarette. "You better say whatever it is you have on your mind," he said. "It's almost closing time."

"Well, in that case." Helen pushed herself to her feet, the bench creaking. Her sensible oxford shoes made a hollow noise on the wooden floor, sounding too much like a heartbeat. "Have you ever been in love, Sam?"

He kept his eyes on the empty glass on top of his piano. A ring of moisture had formed underneath it and he ran a finger along the mark, hoping there wouldn't be a stain. The piano wasn't his and yet he felt protective of it. Almost like Helen. He didn't think she was even his friend anymore, but he still felt as though he owed her something. She had been waiting for this, he knew. She had been looking for someone to listen to her, like the lonely old lady at the bus stop. Like the man who lived a couple of houses down from him and always sat on his porch in the afternoons, hoping the neighbors would stop to talk.

"God," Sam sighed, feeling the traces of water on his palm.

Helen paused on the opposite side of the piano. She laid her forearms over the top and rested her chin on hands. "God," she echoed, her head lifting slightly as she spoke.

Sam felt compelled to answer her. His ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, felt the backs of his teeth.

"I've been in love," he said, a hint of rough tension in his tone. It was impossible for him to seem causal now. His calm had been punctured and it ran down his body, sticking to him like oil. "A couple of times, maybe. Not enough to get married, though. I'll be a bachelor for life." He threw a low laugh in there, made a joke of it, but Helen's lips were flat. She wasn't smiling anymore.

"Hmm." Helen laid her left cheek on her knuckles, the flesh around her eyes crinkling. She had a shadow of old mascara on her eyelids. It made her look dull. Wasted and washed out. "Do you still think I'm trying to hurt you?" she asked.

"What?" He leaned back a little. Her threat was pathetic, but it resonated nonetheless. Sam felt it stir within him, plucking the chords of his rising fear, which had shaped itself into something malignant. It was hard for him to understand why Helen made him nervous. And it was even harder for him to acknowledge that the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up whenever he looked at her. She was changing him, _breaking _him, in her cunning, subtle way.

"Do you understand that I am trying to hurt myself?" Helen continued, her voice muffled as she spoke into her hand. "It's not you that I'm after, Sam. It's not you who I want to taunt and tease…although I could if I really wanted to. This isn't about you. I'm sorry if I made it seem that way. You shouldn't be frightened. Promise me you won't be."

She was looking at him and Sam found that he had to meet her gaze. For not the first time that night, he wondered just who…or what, he was trapped with. Helen who lived upstairs. Helen the cranky college professor. Helen who had some kind of ageless sadness in her eyes, a look that was worse than what he saw in the lonely old woman at the bus stop or his neighbor. A pain that transcended what he himself could comprehend. A loss that ran deep, below what humans might call the heart, into the very core of being.

Sam realized then that he wasn't the one who was about to be changed this night. It was Helen.

"I can't promise you anything," he said, "because there is nothing I trust about you right now."

Helen laughed again, though her amusement was dampened by that same, incessant hurt. The glow from the lamp he kept over his sheet music was cruel. It showed everything and hid nothing. It gave him a glimpse of that watery weakness of hers, the bleary shine in her tired eyes that could only be from tears.

"That's smart of you," Helen said. She lifted her head off her hands and looked over her shoulder, back towards the swinging metal doors that led into the restaurant kitchen. "You shouldn't trust me, because I'm terrible."

"I kind of figured that," Sam said warily. He didn't know if she was joking or not, but doubt seemed more prudent than tepid trust.

"Are you trying to hurt me now too, Sam?" Helen asked. She turned her head back to him and raised a brow, her expression passive. "Do you want to get revenge for the things I said about your mother? I like the concept of revenge. It's convenient. It's also very human. Occasionally, I find myself thinking about revenge…more than I think about redemption. That makes me human, doesn't it?"

"No," Sam replied shortly, expelling a stream of air out through his nose. His breath was stale. "You don't seem anything like a human to me."

And it was true, he thought, regarding Helen carefully from where he sat. There was more than an old upright between them and the distance itself didn't seem measurable. It wasn't intellectual. It wasn't physical. It might not even have been spiritual. But it was different. Helen wasn't like him. If he reached out and touched her now, he knew that he wouldn't be touching another human. That companionship born of a shared species was absent. They weren't exactly opposites, because he couldn't figure out what she was in the first place. And that must be awful, not knowing what you were.

Sam wondered if _that_ was what made Helen so lonely looking. Or maybe it was what made her terrible.

"Why do you want revenge for?" Sam asked. His thought his question might be too intrusive, even a little dangerous. He had no trouble picturing Helen searching for some kind of screwed up payback. She had that look about her, that appearance of cold calculation. Sometimes, when he caught only a glimpse of her face or her eyes, he thought he noticed a hint of righteousness. Not arrogance. Not pride. But justice. Unbending. Unbroken. Unfulfilled…

He had visions of rivers running red. Floods that drowned the world. An Old Testament style reckoning, the type that were mentioned in the first few chapters of the Bible, when God always seemed angry.

Sam swallowed away the nauseous lump in his throat. He'd never cared for those stories much.

"I'm not sure I understand love yet," Helen said. She had bypassed his question entirely, taking him on circuitous route back to the beginning.

Sam felt only slightly frustrated by her games, but he said nothing. There was too much to be feared here. Too much to be lost.

"Maybe that means I'm not human enough," Helen prattled on. "But I thought I understood love when…it gets a bit complicated from here on out, Sam."

His hands were chilled and he slipped them underneath his knees, the bench pressed against his palms. A sudden shriek of wind swept mercilessly down the street outside. Cold New England nights. There was nothing like them, really.

"I'm assuming," he said, trying to stay a step or two ahead of her, which was probably impossible, "that you're going to tell me some sob story about love. Really? Is that it? Is that all an _angel_ has to teach me?"

Sam knew he was playing her game now and surprisingly, he liked it. He'd never been one of those kids who had an imaginary friend. He was never one of those guys who dreamed beyond himself, who thought he could someday conquer the world and turn out filthy rich to boot. On the contrary, Sam had always taken comfort in reality, because when there was nothing left, when all the castles in the air fell down at his feet, there was always the truth. Waiting there, like an old friend. He wished that Helen could have some of that truth now. Or maybe she didn't even need it.

"I wasn't going to tell you about love," Helen said with a quiet shake of her head. Her hair had come loose from the low bun at the nape of her neck, trailing down to her shoulders. It looked a bit frizzy at the ends. Sam guessed that she used a lot of hair spray, not that he knew about such things.

"I was going to talk to you about loss," Helen continued. Her fingers were laying flat on the top of the piano. She wore a ring on her right thumb, a circle of narrow silver set with a small garnet and she tapped it in time to his heartbeat. "I was going to talk to you about leaving Paradise and finding yourself here. _Here_." She gestured at her body, the smile lines around her mouth, the crows feet that tugged at the corners of her eyes, the grey that was starting to invade the black hair at her temples. "It would be a miracle if I could make you understand that loss."

"But why would you want to?" Sam asked, genuinely curious for perhaps the first time. In all honesty, he didn't think he could fathom what she meant, what it would be like to lose Paradise. Hadn't someone written a whole book on that?

"This isn't a cautionary tale," Helen explained. "This isn't even about morality. It's just about something I need to say…before the end of things. It's my lament, my funeral song, and I'm selfish. I feel like I need to have it. Doesn't everybody, Sam?"

He did not respond right away, but thought of his mother sitting at the kitchen table in that ugly old house dress, crying into her hands. He thought of the lonely lady at the bus stop. He thought of his neighbor, whose name he couldn't even remember.

What did the world owe them? Nothing, probably. But Sam, he thought that _he_ might owe them something.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah."

He had given her permission and that was all she needed. Helen's smile was grateful, her expression imbued with a sort of restrained grace that took the heaviest of her years away.

"I suppose I lied to you," she said. "Maybe I am human enough, because I can lie now. It is a little bit about love, less about loss. I was in love once. His name was Michael and he was beautiful. He still is."

"And what happened?" Sam prompted, letting some of his justified annoyance show. "Where is this Michael?"

Helen looked indescribably sad. "He is not with me anymore."

"Why? Because you fell from Paradise?"

"I never said I fell, Sam." Helen's head shot up. "I was pushed."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks for reading! If you have some free time, please leave a review. Feedback always makes me insanely happy. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well!


	12. Part XI A Shared Suspicion

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part eleven of "Hallelujah". As always, I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank all my wonderful readers and reviewers, **saichick, Jenny Joker **and **Rainyaviel. **Also, I would like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts lists. You guys are the best! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XI A Shared Suspicion **

"What is wrong with him?"

Gabriel was surprised when it was Raphael who posed the question. It came to him out of the obscure, like a solitary bird darting from underneath a bank of fog. Gabriel let the words sit with him for a while. He felt them and he weighed their worth. Raphael, for his part, accepted his hesitance. The Healer was nothing if not patient. And perceptive.

It was a rare occurrence that saw them alone together. Gabriel was sitting on a raised bed, nursing a narrow gash to his flank that he had of late received from one of Lucifer's foot soldiers. The injury irked him, especially since it had resulted more from his own carelessness than the keen blade of a demon. He had been distracted in battle, an even rarer occurrence, his mind elsewhere, lost to a very private turmoil that he had failed to quell.

Raphael stood over him, guiding a silver thread through a slender needle. His eyes, which were always keen, were narrowed in thoughtful concentration and he gave off a studious air. Gabriel watched his careful movements. There was nothing labored about him. Nothing timid or uncertain. And when he spoke, his voice was a series of fluid notes, one string of legato phrases connected to another.

"Michael did not go with you," he observed, holding the needle up to the light coming in through the open window as he smiled quietly at his handiwork. "I have never known the two of you to be apart…especially in battle."

"Perhaps we quarreled," Gabriel said. He flinched only slightly when Raphael plunged the needle into the jagged edge of his gash, pulling the thread through and tying off the stitch in a firm knot.

"You are worried," Raphael said softly under his breath. His hands were quick and efficient. The sleeves of his robe brushed over Gabriel's knees. "Your heartbeat is fast and clear. And there is something about your temper, something guarded…and wary. I do not think I have ever seen you frightened before, Gabriel."

"I am not-"

"For Michael," Raphael finished. "You are frightened for him."

A sigh echoed in Gabriel's broad chest. He folded his fingers over the edge of the bed and listened to the charmed songs of the birds outside. The air was golden. Crisp and clean. But his senses were attuned, painfully aware of all that was beautiful…and ugly. He thought of Heniel with the blood of the nephilim on her hands. He thought of Michael, who had strayed beyond his reach and into a realm that was uncharted.

Gabriel looked at Raphael and met the Healer's gaze. He hated to admit to weakness, even when it was not his own.

"You are wise," he said.

Raphael exhaled through his thin nose and finished the last of his stitching, cutting the thread with a lancet. Gabriel prodded his wound with indiscriminate fingers. It was a mark he preferred not to have, a lonely scar that burdened him with something that could have been fear.

Gabriel reached for his tunic resting on the edge of the bed. "I did not take Michael with me," he admitted, "because I did not want him."

Raphael glanced at him over his shoulder. "Why?"

Again, Gabriel hesitated. He did not trust the power of his own words. Language could be treacherous. It bred guile and deceit. It fostered falsehoods that might not be falsehoods at all. There was a danger here, if he was wrong. He could hurt Michael without meaning to.

Gabriel closed himself up. Shuttered his heart. He offered Raphael a bland visage. "Leave this alone," he said, his voice ringing with natural authority.

But Raphael was not deterred.

"I cannot," he replied, the liquid rhythm gone from his words, "because I am frightened too."

Gabriel pulled his tunic over his head, hating the feel of the rough woolen fabric on his tender abdomen. He set his jaw and chewed on his pain, his teeth grinding together, creating an uncomfortable friction that made his flesh crawl. He thought back to the mountaintop, when he had stood on the very edge of the cliff and watched helplessly as Michael plummeted to the desert floor, taking Heniel with him. They had landed in a cloud of sand and when the dust cleared, the sight had been hideous. Gabriel didn't think he would ever be able to rid his mind of the image. Two archangels lying broken and bleeding on the bronzed stone. Two archangels…lying together.

He raised his chin, looking across the room at Raphael. Although they were brothers, Gabriel knew that he had little in common with the Healer. And yet, there was some measure of comfort to be found in their accordance. He had, he realized, felt very alone of late.

Raphael returned his lancet to a small tray by the bedside. He had a set of plain glass jars in which he kept his salves and tinctures, made from herbs he found in the Garden. Gabriel watched with detachment as he arranged his medicines. He wondered at the art of healing, which was lost to him.

"That day," he said slowly, the words slick like bile on his tongue, "when I brought Michael to you."

"His wings were broken."

"And Heniel, she was wounded as well."

"Because he would not let her go."

Gabriel nodded, his neck stiff, the weight of his iron collar resting on his collar bone. "I am convinced," he said, "that it began then."

Raphael emitted a deep, pained sigh. He placed his hands on either side of the tray and stretched out his fingers. There was a faint trace of blood under his nails. Gabriel's.

"It is better if we acknowledge it," he said. "I thought I was alone in my worry, but then I beheld you and your wound and I knew. You have started to shun Michael and so have I. But strangely enough, we alone are not guilty of avoidance."

"Michael isolates himself," Gabriel said.

Raphael stepped away from the bed and slipped his hands into a bowl of water on a nearby table. He used a length of linen to dry his palms. "Heniel as well."

Gabriel swallowed, the tightness of his collar all the more insistent. He felt warm and flushed. No breeze reached through the windows. The air was still. Fragile. "I took Heniel with me to seek out a nephilim," he recounted. "She was withdrawn…and her violence startles me. It suggests guilt."

"Have you prayed for them?"

"Yes."

"Have you spoken to our Father?"

"No." Gabriel looked askance. He could feel his heart beating in the base of his throat, the cadence hypnotic, a false lullaby. This turmoil was new to him and he was unaccustomed to fear. It challenged his grace. Made a shadow of his strength.

Raphael raised both his brows. "That surprises me even more."

There was no reproach in his voice. Gabriel returned his honesty with openness.

"It was not my place," he replied. "Neither of them have been called to the Throne and I cannot account for what I only suspect."

"And what is that?" Raphael questioned. He crossed his wiry arms over his chest. "We have talked around this for far too long, I think. There is a considerable lack of truth. Ambiguity serves no purpose."

Gabriel was irked. So _he_ was going to be made to answer for this? If only he could defer. If only he could return to the moment when he had not doubted, when he had not questioned, when he had looked upon Michael with only brotherly love in his heart and not suspicion. But the moment remained. He could still see them both at the foot of the mountain, Michael's wings twisted, Heniel's face crushed, their blood on the sand. It was then that the aberration began. It was then that he had lost Michael and seen Heniel turn away into darkness.

Unknowingly, a tear glinted in the corner of his eye. "I fear," he said, his words riding on a whisper, "that they have found something in each other."

Raphael put his hand to his chest. "I never thought-"

"It is not too late," Gabriel interrupted. Fierce resolve thrummed within him, seductive with the promise of action, of redemption. He stood, ignoring the twinge of pain in his flank. The stitches pulled. His flesh still was sore. But he gained control, commanded his body and mind and soul.

Raphael looked a him, stunned but not overcome. "Gabriel?"

"Something might be done," he replied. Desperation seized him and he allowed himself to be caught up in the wild torrent. He grasped Raphael's hand in his and they stood together, resolute, unbending and undaunted.

Raphael nodded. "Yes," he said. "_Something."  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Hmm, it was rather strange writing Raphael in this chapter. Those of you who have read "Rebirth" know what I mean, haha. ;)

Thanks so very much for reading! The next installment is in the works and should be posted in about ten days. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!


	13. Part XII The Damned

**Author's Note: **Sorry this chapter was a little delayed, guys. What can I say, the holidays and all that. ^_^ I hope everyone had a very pleasant Christmas. Please accept this update as my rather belated gift to you all.

As usual, I have to thank all my wonderful readers/reviewers for making my holiday very merry. Thank you **Jenny Joker, saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. Your feedback has been just awesome. I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XII The Damned**

The children did not see her. Heniel sat by the edge of the wood, enjoying the tender smile that shaped her lips and the wild, high laughter of the younglings who played nearby. They were capricious little beings. Fickle and exuberant. She was heartened by their innocence, which revealed itself in the glorious clarity of their eyes and the shining brilliance of their living souls.

_Beautiful_, she thought, her wings casting awkward, angular shadows in the light of the late afternoon sun. The air was dusted with gold. Pollen from the fresh-blooming flowers lingered in the bare spaces between the trees. The scent of a few early apples, their round, green bellies warmed with August heat, tickled her sensitive nose. Heniel's shoulders were warmed by the ripe blush of summer. She almost shivered a little, savoring the touch of the wind which played through the high grass like notes plucked on a harp.

And the children laughed. Chimes against her heart. They laughed.

It was surprisingly easy for Heniel's warrior sensibilities to adapt gentler things, and she preferred times like these, when she could see humans as they should be seen, when she could walk amongst their children as an ally and not an instrument of judgment. Hands folded in mindful pray, she bestowed what grace she could, relishing in the blessing of mercy, which was never-ending, which remained even after sin took innocence away. She was the guardian and not the avenging messenger. She was the beam of sweet, soft light that came through the trees and shined on a bereft world. She was an angel, as she was meant to be, protecting those who still returned their Father's love.

Heniel smiled. She watched the children who could not see her, but surely felt her presence. It was her moment as much as theirs. Heniel was greedy. She cherished peace, hoarded it to herself if only because she was never fortunate enough to have it. She delighted in their careless play. The little girls braiding flowers in their hair, petals scattered on their laps. The boys tossing rocks and sticks, hands bruised and already rough. Her soul moved within her. Stirred. It breathed and sighed and resounded with what she took from the children and what she gave in return, a dim echo of newborn faith, of trembling, virgin hope…

Someone touched her hand. For one perilous instant, Heniel was lost to panic. Her vision swam, speckled with bursts of black dots. She felt all the air leave her lungs as the pleasant sentiment of the moment left and she was taken away from the laughter of the children into a world a danger. The soldier within her was roused. Her awareness sharpened and she was haunted by her own insidious doubt. Heniel glanced over the crook of the wing and saw him. Her heart sank a little.

Michael was standing behind her, his expression grave. The frown tugging at his tough mouth did not suit the placid atmosphere of the mossy, musk-scented wood. Heniel was jarred, her mood soured. She felt offended and ashamed at the same time. She resented his presence, which was strangely judgmental. Heniel set her jaw and gnawed at her lip until she tasted blood. It was terrifying, she realized, how powerless he could make her feel.

"Why have you come here?" she asked in a voice that was too tremulous to be mistaken for impassive.

Michael seemed to hesitate. Heniel disliked his indecision, which she felt was an illusion he had woven to protect his own conscience from what lurked within.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said at length. The light from the sun reddened his skin. Heniel couldn't tell if he was blushing or not.

"Again?" she asked sharply. Uncrossing her legs, she pushed herself to her feet, a subtle ache behind her knees. She was stiff and sore, the blood pulsing thickly against her temples. Heniel looked at Michael and tried to take his measure. For the first time, she could acknowledge that she was in fact naïve. Misguided. She had hoped, quite in vain, that their previous conversation in the Garden would have put to rest the dissension between them. The air had been cleared, swept clean in the wake of a storm. They had done away with insinuation and what remained was a truth Heniel thought she could rely on.

"It is finished," she told him.

He shook his head, lines of worry crossing his brow. "Not yet."

"I thought we understood each other."

"We do."

"Then you must have nothing to say to me," she replied. "This is an exercise in futility."

Michael reached out and tried to touch her again, his finger gliding over her cheek. "No," he said, and that was all.

Heniel was enraged. She felt put-upon. Degraded. And she was in mourning, grieving for Michael who had lost his esteem, who had become twisted and dangerous in her eyes. She missed the days when he was only her General. She missed his heroism and virtue. The children's laughter was suddenly shrill in her ears. Deafening. Heniel cringed. It was all so unfair, how the world could turn against her, so wretchedly unfair.

Her anguish seemed to provoke something of sympathy in Michael. He frowned and his sorrow managed to soften her…a little.

"You are never pleased to see me," he said.

Heniel grimaced. The sun glanced through the leaves and made her cheeks warm. "I am sorry," she said, although her tone was unyielding.

Michael nodded, but he didn't seem mollified. "I know it was wrong of me to disturb you here," he said.

"You shouldn't have."

"But it is not safe for us," he muttered, "_elsewhere_."

Her skin prickled, fear dropping into her gut like a warm sickness. Heniel nodded dumbly, the implication too implicit. The vague hint of fear in Michael's eyes was enough to provoke her own terror. She looked over her shoulder once at the giddy human children and began to envy their cheery, dimpled smiles.

"You are too frightened to speak to me within the confines of Heavens," she said, feeling the need to name his obscure anxiety. "You think we will be overheard."

"Precisely." Michael hissed the word.

Heniel felt a faint tingling in her upper lip. Her jaw was loose and slack and her eyes burned. "Please," she said, horrified to hear that she had begun to beg. "This is a mistake."

Michael took her hand in his, the rough calluses on his palms grazing the backs of her knuckles. "Away from here," he murmured, his chest rising as he spoke.

Heniel's eyes were blurred. In the past, she had always thought she would resist this moment, fight the paradox that rose up within her, the battle between the holy and the profane. But now she was surprisingly limp. Weak. It shamed her when she realized that vulnerability did indeed suit her.

Michael led her further into the wood, away from the human children and the lingering rays of sunlight that slithered through the green summer leaves. The forest floor was thick with undergrowth and they were forced to move slowly, their footsteps cushioned by dead, dried leaves and the scattered detritus that had gathered under the cool canopy of the trees. There was a very narrow clearing off to the right of their path. They stood there together for a long minute, Heniel feeling decidedly claustrophobic as the bramble closed around her.

She suddenly realized that there was very little space between her and Michael. _Unsafe. _The branches scratched at her arms, a veritable cage and she felt the briars prick at the tender quills of her wings. This was torture, in its keenest form. This was something fate had orchestrated to torment her, to put doubt into all her beliefs and judgment and what she held most dear, her faith.

"You have made a fugitive of me," she grumbled.

"Not yet." Michael scratched his chin, his fingers moving convulsively.

It seemed needless to tell him to leave. She had tried that argument before and it hadn't dissuaded him. She had even gone so far as to confess to her own darkness, in the hopes that the shadow would somehow give way to the pressure of light, a stray beam of hope pushing through the clouds. It was, she thought, her only chance for survival. Her future would be decided here and now, in one breathless, fumbling moment. And it wasn't until Michael looked at her that she realized she had willingly walked into this snare. She had consigned herself to ruin.

Heniel thought of all the angels that had fallen before her, the sickly, perverted ones who had mated with humans and spawned nephilim. The demons who had followed Lucifer and now lurked in the Pit. Would they warn her now, if they could? Would they call out to her, in their voices of iron and chains and fire, and tell her to turn away. _Run. Run and never look back._

She could almost hear them, stirring in the damned world beneath her feet. _Run. Run._

But how far could she run from herself?

Michael's nervous energy was infectious and Heniel shifted her weight. _We're alone_, she told herself. _I never wanted to be alone with him again…_

"Michael," she said his name, tried to restore his sense and her own. "We had an agreement." She forced herself to remember their last conversation in the Garden, her desperation coupled with his, the confession that had been damning.

_Am I lying to myself?_

He raised his eyebrows, the skin of his forehead bronzed by too many errant sunbeams. His lips were dry and he pressed them together, a small crease showing in his sharp chin.

"Is it not there?" he asked.

Heniel did not have to feign confusion. She dropped her head a little as she tried to sort through his words. Perhaps she shouldn't ask. Perhaps she shouldn't indulge the heat of her lurking sin. _Run. Run away. It only takes a moment to be damned…_

"What do you mean?" she questioned, ceding yet another shred of her resilience.

Michael seemed stunned. His head bobbed a little on his neck, the ring of iron resting heavily against his collar bone. "Do not delude yourself," he said.

His hostility threw her off balance. She had not expected it from him, he who had so unremittingly sought her favor for reasons she wasn't sure she fully understood…or wanted to. But she stayed silent. Bit her tongue until her eyes watered. She would not be passive. She would not be prone. And she would not yield…

…to him.

"You told me that you loved me," Michael said plainly.

Heniel stiffened, disturbed by his casual language and breezy, brash tone. "I said that _you_ believed we were in love," she corrected. Her defenses were not quite as robust as they once had been, but she kept herself well fortified. This was, in a way, a battle. She was keenly aware of her soul, that precious vessel inside the shell of her flesh that she had kept and jealously guarded. Her eyes narrowed as she beheld Michael. Was that what he wanted from her?

"Don't argue over semantics," he said, defiance causing his lip to curl.

Heniel dropped her hands to her sides. "You are reckless."

"I am intent."

"We acknowledged it. What is left?"

"Everything." He leaned forward. "The beginning."

She scoffed at him, tried to disguise her own unease with foul laughter. "The delusion is yours," Heniel said.

Michael's face hardened and he crossed his arms over his chest, the veins over his knuckles bulging as he tightened his hands into fists. "What would you do?" he asked.

His flippancy was provoking. The spark of Heniel's annoyance grew, burned and burned until it became a wildfire. She knew that he was insulting her again, doubting her own abilities and intelligence and her very understanding of the torment that _he_ had fostered. Her self-confidence, which had always been slightly unstable, began to crumble. She looked within herself and found little there, her resistance diseased and flagging. But there was something, an echo of determination that remained. Heniel knew, with the most perfect certainty, that this was not allowed.

And she would fight him to the death, there, amidst the briar and bramble and the ruin of the living world, which would be become their battleground. She felt the soil beneath her feet, the solid earth, heard the warning cries of the damned and squared her hips. It would be decided now and she would not relent.

"We will ignore this," she said. "We will not give our attention to something that is unworthy-and may taint our souls. Is that what you want?"

"No," Michael replied stubbornly. "But you are a fool to court denial."

"Do not call me a fool!" she spat, wounded. Heniel knew then that she had left herself vulnerable to him if he could still hurt her. She withdrew, tried to regain her impassivity. Anger had taken much of her indifference from her, scattered it away on the wind until she was left only with seething intemperance. Heniel was disgusted with herself. She turned from Michael so that he would not see her self-reproach.

"This is the last time we will meet to discuss this," she said. "This is the last time-"

"No." He reached for her, his fingers grasping not her hand, but the very edge of his wing.

A few tears showed in her eyes when his palm glided over the long, sleek feathers. "Please," she said, her final prayer.

Michael kissed her. Heniel's breath caught in her throat. His was a soldier's kiss, rough, unpracticed. His lips were too firm, the skin chapped, his insistence painful, a climbing desperation that reached her even as she tried to pull away. But there was unity still. A meeting. A journey to the crossroads now completed. Heniel felt the great weight of her wings pulling at her shoulders as Michael's body weight drove them back, into the brambles. The briars were in skin, stinging with little kisses of their own and she was shamed by the heat inside, the pressure in her stomach that demanded more, more, _more…_

"Stop," she begged, as his mouth lingered by the curve of her jaw. "Stop, please God!"

The name of their Father was enough to shock them both into stillness. Michael had his hands on the edge of her wing, his palm now slick with a surprising splash of blood, the tips of her feathers more cutting than any rejection.

He dropped his gaze, but not quick enough for her to miss the tears in his eyes. "I am sorry," he heaved, a great sob in throat. "Oh God, what I have done to us…"

She was devastated, for a moment, the nightmare realized, the end looming over her in that tight, inhospitable corner of the world. And Heniel clung to him, the distant laughter of the children rising on the wind, silver chimes, a death knell against her weary heart. It was over. She had failed.

"Tell me now," Michael said when he had let go of her, "what you said in the Garden."

He wanted her love, something she had, but could not give. Heniel looked away, said nothing, rewarded his supplication with silence. But no, not silence, she corrected herself. The world around them was alive with noise. Cries of sulfur and rust and hollowed bones. They were damned, she knew. And already, they were calling to her.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Finally, some romance! I suppose it's about time. Both Heniel and Michael have been dragging their feet a lot lately. ;)

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free minute, please leave me a review. I honestly get ecstatic whenever I receive feedback for this fic. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted soon. Happy New Year, everyone!


	14. Part 13 Theodicy

**Author's Note: **Welcome to part 13! Before we begin, I would just like to briefly thank all my readers and **saichick**, who took the time to review. Your encouragement is truly appreciated. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 13 Theodicy**

"Pushed?" Sam tried to find Helen's shadowy form behind the circular pool of light radiating from the lamp above his sheet music. She was still standing on the other side of his piano, but it seemed as though a veil had fallen over her, the substance of her being blurred and misshapen like one of Picasso's paintings. He blinked once.

Helen appeared the same when he glanced at her again, stiff and sour, her mouth leathery, touched with a bit of coarseness that seemed out of place in a college professor.

"Pushed," she repeated, the word causing her lips to pucker. She stretched her arms along the top of the upright until her fingertips brushed the rim of her empty glass. With a careless, yet seemingly calculated flick of her wrist, she sent the small tumbler skittering towards the edge. It wobbled on the end of the piano lid. Sam thought the glass would fall and smash. It didn't.

Helen beheld the glass with unabashed whimsy, her mouth lopsided. "I don't think I can make it any clearer than that."

"No," Sam replied. Heat was coming off the lamp, a fierce glow that made his face feel sunburned in the dead of winter. "I don't want to make anything of this," he said, finally admitting his own reluctance, which had come in and out like a fickle tide all night long. "I'll tell you, Helen, I was raised Lutheran but I haven't gone to Church regularly since I was eighteen. Still, it's enough that I remember some of the stuff they taught us at Sunday school."

"Go ahead," she said. Her eyes were narrowed, reminding him too much of his niece's cat who just loved to stalk mice and whatever hapless insects crossed its path.

_Predator and prey_, he thought to himself. _Don't be a fool and get those two mixed up._

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, his nose stuffy with the smell of Helen's cigarette. "The only angel I know of that was pushed from Heaven," he said, "was the Devil."

Helen said nothing.

"He got too proud," Sam continued, hating the inconsistency of his tone. He felt like a teenager again, his voice cracking miserably. "He tried to be more powerful than God and got kicked out…err, pushed," he rectified.

Helen stared at him. Her teeth clicked together when she shifted her jaw. The slight sound sent a quick chill dancing along Sam's spine. His sister's thick, hand knitted sweater wasn't nearly enough to keep out that kind of cold.

He waited a long time for Helen to say something and when she didn't, an insidious ache stuck its finger between his ribs. He thought a lot about men who tempted fate, either by flying too close to the sun or digging a little too deep in the earth. Sam had always figured he was smart enough to stick to the middle road, on the straight and narrow, but there were unexpected crossroads. Like this one. A path he probably shouldn't follow, a line he shouldn't cross.

Sam pushed his tongue against his teeth, feeling his old bridgework. Since when had he become a coward?

Helen seemed to be considering him, her gaze no longer predatory, but sad. He didn't know which was better, seeing her eyes all lit up with some lofty wisdom that he couldn't aspire to, or watching her sink low, lower than the lowest man, until she was nothing but a dirty smudge on the floor, a puddle people sloshed through and walked right over.

_No middle ground_, Sam reminded himself. _The happy medium is a myth._

Helen rearranged herself behind the piano, her eyes down, head bent in his direction. "I don't like insinuations," she said.

The hurt in her voice made Sam's breath catch in this throat. "All right, all right," he said, holding up his hands. "Let's be fair and put all our cards on the table, okay?" He'd never been a fan of poker or gambling, really, but he thought she could appreciate the analogy…more than he would ever respect her bluff, if she was indeed bluffing.

"Here we go," he said, preparing himself for the icy plunge. "You already told me you were an angel, which I'm not saying I believe, but now are you trying to tell me that you're the Devil?"

Sam didn't know how to gauge Helen's reaction, which was rather understated. What he said obviously hadn't upset her, although he thought he saw a flash of her ego, which had been roughed-up, all black and blue. The corners of her mouth pulled down into a bland frown and what remained of her humanity came to the fore. She was the weary academic again, the dull scholar.

"No," Helen said with surprising firmness, her head ducking a little like a bird's when she spoke. "I am _not _the Devil, Sam. The Devil is, hmm, I'm going to put this simply, the Devil is bad. I never thought I was bad and I really hope you don't think so poorly of me. If you do, I might start to hate myself. I guess I'm naïve, because I've always believed in my goodness."

He knew that Helen was anything but naïve, but it pleased him to see her humbled. Knocked off her high, swaggering horse.

"You should believe in your goodness," he replied after letting her stew for a good minute. He hesitated, and then added, "I do."

Helen's features relaxed, the lines around her lips and eyes smoothing. "Thank you," she said. "That was very kind of you."

The moment that passed between them was awkward. Sam felt the need to fill it with noise. Instinctively, he placed his fingers on the keys and plucked out the first few measures of Handel's _Lascia Ch'io Pianga. _He wasn't a music snob, preferring jazz and even the old school R&B of the fifties and sixties to classical, but baroque was always fun to play, light and airy, even when the song was sad.

Helen moved with the music, her head thrown back, eyes raised to the ceiling where one of the old fans churned rhythmically, the thrum of the blades mechanical, measured. The breeze stirred her wiry hair. "I guess the truth is, I'm not good anymore," Helen explained. "There are rules. There are always rules, Sam. We all have to follow them. Stop at the red light. Don't litter. No smoking in restaurants and bars." Her wink was ill-timed, hackneyed and affected. "This might surprise you, but I used to be good at following the rules. And then one day, I decided not to. I fell in love with Michael."

"Which isn't allowed," Sam supplied. He was more than a few measures into the aria now and he decided to finish it, even though the unyielding keys of the creaky upright were not exactly suited for notes meant to be played on a harpsichord. The air around them was soured by the rough music.

"Exactly," Helen replied. She had her eyes closed and was listening.

"And that's why you were pushed?" Sam said, making the leap.

Helen's eyes snapped open. Her pupils focused. "No," she said. "I was pushed _because_ of Michael. He broke the rules too, but he wasn't honest with himself…or anyone else, for that matter. He didn't keep his promises and so I paid the price. I was pushed, he kept his wings. It all balances out in the end, I suppose."

"It sure as hell doesn't!" Sam said, surprised at his own indignity.

Helen's brows shot up to her graying hairline. "Relax," she muttered. "Want me to buy you a drink?"

His hands fell from the keys, the last notes ringing with a faint discordance that bothered his musically sensitive ears. Sam wasn't sure when the change had occurred, when his doubt had hardened into something that resembled belief, or faith, perhaps. Maybe it had happened subtly, over the course of the evening. Maybe it had started when he first saw Helen sitting at the bar, all curled up inside herself like a wounded animal, her heart so clearly broken that he just wanted to reach out and remind her that she wasn't alone in the world. Or maybe it had happened now, in the last few seconds, with the final strains of Handel's masterpiece whispering to his soul, bolstering his belief in the world outside his own, which he had always felt had existed. His Mom's drinking problem hadn't taken his belief in God away from him. Neither had Vietnam. But looking at Helen, seeing her wasted and degraded, her glory left to ruin on man's wretched soil, he felt that constancy within him waver.

To believe in her, Sam realized, he would have to doubt everything else.

"Why would God do that?" he asked, acutely aware of his mortal ineloquence, his tongue that formed words of heated insolence without any true intent. "It's not fair."

Helen's expression immediately cooled. The light above his sheet music flickered and ozone wafted amidst the stale cigarette smoke. The woman leaned over the top of the piano until they were nose to nose and Sam could see that her lipstick had left a stain in the little well of flesh below her nose.

"That's utter bullshit," Helen said, her voice reverberating with a strange sort of echo, something that played against his heart, a deep, dangerous reproach. "How dare you blame God."

Sam folded his fingers over the rim of the bench, his palms slick with sweat. He was reminded of the Book of Revelation, the very last part of the Bible that seemed born from the delirium of a fever dream. Helen had the color of a reckoning in her eyes and in her voice now, the tint of holy fire, not hell's flames. Sam was unable to look at her for long and he stood up, his every human instinct telling him to flee, to cower and prostrate himself before a wonder his mind couldn't comprehend. But then Helen put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down on the piano bench. Reality returned, irreverent as ever and she was a woman again, trapped in her corrupt, fleshy prison.

"It is very like humanity, in all its petulance," Helen explained, one elbow resting on the piano, "to blame God for everything. Tragedies are easier to digest if they have some cosmic significance, I suppose. It's always easier to understand loss if you blame it on someone else. In fact, that should be part of the grieving process. Shifting responsibility. And I'll admit, the convenience of it all is attractive. But take it from me, Sam, someone who knows, someone who's _seen_. You should never blame God for what's happened to you. You're naïve if you think it's His fault."

"And so you're saying it's _your_ fault?" he returned, surprised when her clean, simple logic infuriated him.

Helen shook her head, a tendril of her hair brushing the bronzed shade of the lamp. "Never," she said. "Blame is a human concept, I'm afraid. As is fairness. Humans made them up to better understand yourselves…but not the Divine, no, never the Divine. God isn't about blame or fairness. God is about—"

"What?" Sam knew that he was leaning forward on the bench, his anticipation a mockery of his former self-control. Helen clearly enjoyed his blatant curiosity. She was smiling graciously, and for a moment, the light softened the lines around her eyes and she looked beautiful, a relic he had found lying in the dust, a shining bit of gold locked away from the world, undiscovered.

Helen reached across the piano and took his hand. "God is about love, Sam. He loves me. He loves you. And He understood my love for Michael, but Michael did not. That's why I was pushed, Sam. Not because I was evil or disobedient. Not because I suddenly decided to break the rules I had so faithfully followed. I was pushed because of Michael. The blame, yes, I can use the word blame now, I'm human, the blame rests entirely with him. It's his fault…and my sickness, because I can't forgive. It's the closest I'll ever come to damnation, I think. God, Sam, won't somebody help me?"

Sam didn't know why, but he was hurt by what she said. A grimace tightened his mouth, putting gnarls and knots into his hard, tired face. The weight of Helen's hand was slight on his, her fingers trembling slightly. He squeezed her knuckles once and thought of her as he had never dared to think of her before, this strange, sad creature.

"Angel," Sam said. When he looked at her, he almost thought he could see her wings, or the shadow of them, a great mass of grey behind her shoulders, a ghost of her past life. He wanted to tell her that she had done the impossible. She had given him castles in the air and fairy-tales and a belief that was deep and sincere. If only there were some way he could thank her for that. If only.

A single tear rolled down Helen's cheek, lingering around the curve of her nose. She sniffed and shuddered…but still kept her grip on his hand. "You can do it, you know," she said.

"Do what?" he asked.

Helen lowered her head and Sam knew, he just knew that she was praying.

"Save me," Helen muttered.

The light above the piano fizzled, and then went out.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thanks so very much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave me a review. Feedback always makes me insanely happy.

The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten to twelve days. Until then, take care and be well!


	15. Part XIV The Covenant

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part fourteen of "Hallelujah". We're finally getting to the point of no return, I think. Michael and Heniel can talk around their desires all they want, it certainly doesn't make the danger any less potent. ^_^

As usual, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly thank all my readers and reviewers, **Rainyaviel, saichick **and **cdewinter78**. Your support is truly appreciated. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XIV The Covenant **

"We should hate ourselves," Heniel said. Her voice was a questionable murmur. She spoke of dark things, gave names to nightmares in a time of blinding light.

Michael glanced up at her, an errant sunbeam falling across his face, his skin heated with the hues of dusk. An early evening fog had dropped a veil of mist over the skies and the heavens were obscured by thoughtless clouds. It was very much like living in a dream, Michael decided. He hoped that he would never wake.

They were sitting together on the ramparts, perched on a window casement overlooking the Garden. Spring had come early and with it the nightly dew. The world was a kaleidoscope of wild color, fragments of glass and diamonds. When Michael closed his eyes he could still see the patterns of light. And her, he could always see her.

"We should hate ourselves," Heniel repeated. Her gaze was keen and she searched for reassurance, a suggestion of comfort that only he could provide. She looked for his judgment. She wanted his condemnation. The uncertain haunted her, as did these stolen bits of time that Michael had greedily claimed and she along with him. It was their surrender, pure and simple. It was the inevitable, their end, their fall. It was the love that he had desired, but now feared with the awe of a child.

In a way, their lives had unraveled. What had started as an insinuation had grown into something much more powerful, an understanding that they both acknowledged and were now held captive by. And he knew that Heniel was right to hate herself for it, but he would never tell her so. There was something delicate about her that he wanted to protect, a reflection of his own soul that lived in her mirrored eyes.

His hand caught the sunlight as he touched her face. "Together," he said and that was all.

Heniel surprised him with a little grin. Her face lost the unbending stoicism of a warrior in favor of an expression that was feminine. She could be beautiful, an object he had discovered and now treasured. She was his relic, with her wings of sea-foam and her sad, sad blue eyes. She was an echo of the ocean when it met the sky. And when she spoke, there was a new, tentative music to her voice.

Heniel stirred on her perch, uncomfortable with their closeness. What they were doing was very near to a sin. It stretched the limits of their resilience and their restraint whenever they were together, in those harried moments they found scattered throughout their days. She did not battle with him any longer. She kept his company when she could. They walked side by side in the Garden in the morning. They sang the hosannas and hallelujahs together at night. They watched the world and its child, man, forever distanced from the sons of Adam, but guardians to humanity nonetheless. It was a shared existence and Michael delighted in the secrecy of it. He was a thief, stealing happiness and he knew was wrong to steal her. In the back of his mind, he sometimes wondered if Heniel would ever truly be his. The answer was never clear.

She squirmed when he touched her now, his hand only on her cheek. "Don't," she warned.

"I will," Michael said. He was headstrong and he kissed her, the space between them eclipsed as he leaned forward and brought his lips to hers.

But the gesture was weak. Michael's heart soured. He couldn't avoid his guilt, which would run wild if he let it. He couldn't avoid the nagging feeling that he had somehow failed already, that he had let her fall too far without catching her.

Heniel closed her eyes, her mouth unyielding and tough, a soldier's last defense. "Please," she said. "We will be seen."

His fingers found the little well of her flesh above her lips. Her touched her words and felt her voice. "Never."

"It will end," she said. Her eyelashes were beaded with salt, her tears coming fast and swift.

Michael knew he was powerless to stop them.

"Free me from this," Heniel muttered, "before we are both damned-"

"It will never happen."

"Our Father loves us. Our deception is cruel."

"We do not deceive. These moments belong to us already."

Heniel's smile was watery. Her chin trembled and her teeth chattered and when the spring wind blew, it was not yet thawed, but chilled with the late frost. "Michael," she said. "You are a fool."

He was taken aback. He dropped his hand from her face and let his palm fall over his knee. Heniel's assertion perplexed him and he thought of all the times he had considered _her_ the fool, the simpleton. Wisdom was an intriguing concept, one that he himself had struggled to understand over his ageless lifespan. It occurred to him that perhaps Heniel saw what he did not. Her future was written, he felt, not in the stars, but in the secret they kept, this unworthy love. It frightened her and Michael knew, by all accounts, that it should have frightened him.

But he was reckless.

"Do you doubt me?" Michael asked.

She arched her neck, her head coming to rest on the wall behind her, the blue-black of her hair an inky shadow against the stone. "Yes," Heniel said.

"I promised I would protect you."

"From yourself?"

He slid off the ledge, his boots hitting the ground with a dull thud. An echo of silver rang from his wings. "Do not offend me," he said, surprised at the threat in his voice.

Heniel raised a brow, though she did not challenge him. "I have regrets."

"And the fault is mine?"

She lowered her gaze. "Yes."

He did not know whether or not to pity her. She was bereft, a creature in mourning, grieving for some loss that he had searched for in her but could not yet find. Michael was ashamed of his anger. He had felt intemperate of late. And he had felt tempted…

He took her hands in his and pressed them between his palms. Her heart was beating through her fingertips, the blood warm and eager. The threat of her touch was sinister. If he was wise, he would let her go.

_Let go. Let go._

Heniel had shouted it to him from the mountaintop.

_Let go. Let go._

Michael rested his forehead against hers. "No," he said.

"We cannot go on like this," Heniel insisted. Her breathing was hectic. He saw a vein bulge in her neck, a tiny river of blue in her flesh. "We will be damned, Michael, I do not-"

He held her. He soothed the pain, that seething fear that poisoned them both and took the promise of what would come, what might be, away from them. The wisps of her hair tickled his nose with hints of heady incense. She smelled of the world, of Eden and the early evening clouds that came to court the moon every night. Michael cherished the tenderness of her body against his. She rested her chin on his shoulder, her lips daringly close to his neck, in the snug space above his collar.

"Do not do this," she begged.

Michael kissed her, his mouth finding only the side of her cheek, the skin still sticky with tears, tasting of salt and her own sickness.

"Because of this," he acknowledged, "because of this I have made you hate me."

Heniel hesitated. "No," she said at last. "I do not hate you."

It was as far as she would go, not an open declaration of love, but her own peculiar blessing.

Heniel raised her head. The tip of her nose touched his cheek when she kissed him. It was a subtle, soft moment. It was the death of a warrior, her eyes dimmed by mischance and the future that would never be certain for them.

Michael let his fingers skim her brow. "Together," he echoed.

Heniel drew away slightly. "What do you-"

"If we are damned," he swore, "I promise it will be together."

She took comfort in that. Her hands closed over his shoulders in a fitful embrace. "Thank you," she whispered into his ear.

Michael smiled. It was his covenant, the only thing he could truly give to her besides his love. And he wanted her to have it.

Heniel released him. She jumped off the ledge, the defined arch of her wings catching the last light of the sun in a fanciful glitter. She did not bid him farewell when she left, but he knew her heart was warmed.

Michael watched her go until she disappeared around the corridor. He stayed by the window a long time as night fell, missing her, but missing that singular moment of peace.

"Fragile," he muttered, touching his lips where she had kissed him. He was wise enough to know that it would not last.

* * *

><p>The great choirs of Heaven were singing when Heniel walked alone. Her steps were measured by the notes, by the rhythm of each voice as it rose and fell. The moon was beckoned by the sweetness. The sun slipped the last of its fingers over the horizon. And in the dark, there was only music, there was only the air quivering with the sound of the multitude of heavenly voices, the chorus that Lucifer had once commanded before his fall.<p>

Heniel wandered. She was aimless in her journey, traversing the many corridors of her Father's house. She observed the souls that dwelled there in everlasting wonderment, a joy she could feel, but not claim as her own, for even Paradise, home of all angels, belonged to mankind.

The shadow of Michael's touch was still on her skin. The memory of his embrace lingered, lasted into her waking dreams, which were spiced by the sweetness of his words, by his _sincerity. _

She had parted from Michael but carried still his covenant in her heart. It was a secret, but a worthy one, and for the first time she did not feel shame. Pausing in an alcove that let out into the Garden, she listened to the rising celestial hymns. The words were awash with joy. She felt the music reverberate in her soul, shaking the very tips of her feathers down to the quills. Her skin ached, teased with each legato phrase, the notes ringing with a noise that was almost visible.

Heniel opened her heart to the sound and let it overwhelm her. She stood in the half-golden shades of twilight, the sky now tinted with a benign blue and welcomed the most tenuous happiness. It was reckless abandonment. It was foolish. But she had always been a fool. Hadn't Michael said she was...

She didn't hear him. He was a shadow. An insinuation of doubt. A question in her mind that spoke once and then fell silent. He reached out from behind and put his hand on her shoulder and she, fool that she was, thought it was someone else.

"Michael," Heniel cried, turning around with a smile.

But her eyes met not the face of her lover. This angel was somber, his sorrow etched into the small creases around his mouth. Gabriel frowned at her. The weight of his hand was heavy against her arm.

"Do not be frightened," he said.

Heniel's smile faded. "Never," she promised. "Never, never."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>A brief moment of peace before the coming storm. I thought Michael and Heniel deserved a little bit of happiness before they destroy each other. ;)

Thanks so very much for taking the time to read! If you happen to have a free moment, please leave me a review. I always love hearing from readers.

The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Take care and be well, everyone!


	16. Part XV The Leper

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to part fifteen of "Hallelujah". I must say, I cannot get over all the lovely reviews I received for the last installment. Thank you **saichick, Captain Razz, Rainyaviel **and **Helen3616. **Also, I would like to thank all the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys rock! I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for your feedback. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XV The Leper**

They sat together underneath a willow. When Heniel put her hand on the bole of the tree, several flakes of grey bark fell into her palm, an unexpected roughness against her flesh. She thought of Michael and the way he had touched her, with little regard and a determination that was threatening. He had the bearing of a soldier, not a priest, a brazen sort of prophet who seemed a little too unrepentant. Heniel smiled to herself. These were quiet charms for soft hours, memories of golden light and the occasional temptation. And it all seemed so far from a sin now. It all seemed so regrettably perfect.

But there were consequences to every wayward action. Laws and rules and commandments that governed more than the soul, but defined the difference between salvation and damnation. Gabriel's steadfast company reminded Heniel of such things, sobered her. She dared to glance at him sitting beside her. He was a creature of magnificence in the dark, his carriage stately, his dignity fluid and natural, an extension of his pious heart. She envied his profound reverence. It made her more aware of her guilt, which had written its taint upon her. She felt impure. She felt _unclean._

Gabriel's expression was inscrutable when he looked at her. He had cold eyes, mirrors that reflected but never revealed. "You seem lonely and lost," he observed.

His words were like a homecoming. Heniel felt as though he had defined her, solved the riddle of her distress with simple, passive eloquence. She wished she had such an understanding of herself. She wished she knew what it was she truly wanted.

"A bird caught in a tempest," Heniel suggested with a painful laugh. She hoped that her own brevity would lessen her insecurity, that damp fear that clung to her like a second skin.

It did not.

"Would you be offended if I told you that I was concerned for your well-being?" Gabriel asked.

The night was deep around them, the shadows blood-dark. Winter stars shone in a spring sky. Heniel disliked the chill, the fingers of frost that put ice patterns into the leaves and made the distant branches of the oak trees appear skeletal. She mistrusted her eyes. But the distortion, she knew, came from within. Her vision of the world had somehow been damaged and she was left to grope in the dark, blind, a pilgrim in her own homeland.

"I am honored that you think of me," she said. Her reply was neutral. Safe. But she had no skill for this game. Heniel closed her eyes for a minute and breathed. She remembered the sand on the river's shore splashed with red when she had killed the nephilim. Her hands had been steady around the hilt of her sword then. Now they trembled.

"You place too much faith in me and not enough in yourself," Gabriel said. He paused and pressed his lips together, his indecision palpable. "Unless," he finally added, "you have reason to."

She hated the question in his voice, that low, halting undertone that suggested a private misgiving. Heniel dropped her left hand from her lap, the grass wiry between her fingers. She could feel the gnarled ridges of one of the willow's roots. Her heart beat through the veins in her wrist and she ignored the rhythm, the thunderous thud of her life as it slipped away from her into the past, where she could not reach it.

"I am sorry I have disappointed you," Heniel said. She waited, and then added, "I have always admired you." Her affection for him was fervent, a desire to emulate and imitate what she perceived to be his greatness. Gabriel was that shadowing pillar. He stood tall even in the storm. He was not eroded by age, or worn down and conquered by time, but remained unchanged through triumph and tragedy alike. It was painful for Heniel to be near him, she realized, both rejoicing in his company and despairing as she found herself lacking. It occurred to her that she would never be like him, even though she had tried. God, Father, how she had tried.

Gabriel surprised her when he reached out and touched her. His mighty hand fell over hers in a gesture of brotherly affection, the wise scholar rewarding the diligent pupil. But Heniel was sickened. The warmth of his palm atop her knuckles reminded her of Michael. Her respect for him_ had_ wavered, she realized. She missed the days when he was her General alone. She did not like him much now, when he was weakened by love and other base desires that she was too terrified to name.

Gabriel cleared his throat, his gaze lightened by the wily shafts of moonlight that found their way through the silver-leafed branches. He was a rock. He was the mountaintop she had fallen from. And he knew it, of course. Gabriel always knew. Wisdom was in his blood, weakness in hers.

"I take it that I have your trust then?" Gabriel asked.

The question was mild. He had made it simple for her to answer. Heniel touched her neck, the necessary words still lodged in the back of her throat. Was he asking her to make a choice? she wondered. Was it all happening so quickly?

Hesitation. She was chained by it. A whispering chill raised gooseflesh along her arms. Heniel felt daunted by Gabriel's certainty. It tested her own wild fickleness and her doubt, which came on like a flood, not cleansing, but drowning her body and soul.

Heniel glanced at Gabriel, awed by his confidence and self-possession. She longed for stability, which Michael had failed to give her. She wished for someone to hold her hand in the dark. She yearned for reassurance, a comfort freely given in her time of desperate need. And Gabriel had been her protector in the past, the guardian who watched over shepherds, a refuge to those who gave refuge.

"Yes," Heniel said at length. Her jaw was loose and she struggled with the word. It was an admission of weakness, but a saving grace nonetheless. Redemption was so tantalizingly close and she hearkened to the mirage, to the hope that she could somehow undo all the wrong she had already wrought.

The wind sang a legato lullaby amongst the willow's branches. _Come home. _She could still come home…

"There have been questions," Gabriel said.

"I have not heard them," she replied.

"Perhaps you should begin to listen. _Now._" Gabriel raised his chin slightly and viewed the cool depths of the sky with his plaintive stare.

Heniel stirred in the quiet. She rubbed the fingers of her free hand together and felt the gritty residue of the tree's bark. She wondered if she should leave now. Was flight preferable to lingering alone in the unfathomable black? Was there any honor in retreat?

Her loneliness was overwhelming. Michael's company had not assuaged that great void inside her, that empty, twisted silence. And her lover himself was only a hollow echo. He had disappeared into the dark inside her. But she deserved to be alone. It was the isolation of the unworthy, the diseased, the unclean…

_Unclean. Unclean. _

Heniel pushed herself up onto her knees and tried to stand. It was Gabriel's steadying hand that pulled her down again, his careful strength overwhelming her. As she sank into the grass to him, she felt something wet slide across her cheek. It was a tear.

_This is your burial_, she told herself. _This is your tomb._

"Let me help you," Gabriel said, the words nearly disguised by a sigh. "Please."

Heniel wavered dangerously for an instant, but then she realized that she was in control.

_I can deny all this_, she thought. _I can even condemn him for his wrongful suspicions. _Power repulsed her, though and the truth was much more attractive. It beckoned to her, a beacon in the miserable gloom. It was more promising than anything Michael had ever given. It was salvation, the respite she had been searching for, the home-coming of the Prodigal Son, the denial of all sins, the bounty of exquisite mercy.

Heniel leaned against the bole of the willow, defeated. Was this a betrayal? Or was it justice? She considered what she owed to Michael, but her loyalty was misdirected by something greater than love. It was easier, she realized, for her to hate him. He had taken what she cherished. He had obscured the line between her devotion and her doubt. He had pulled her down off that mountaintop into the dust of the earth besides him, where they both lay without their wings, eternally profaned. But she had been willing, of course, wasn't that a sin as well? Blame was indiscriminate and she had fallen victim to its gluttonous jaws. She thought of Michael's tepid reassurances, his vows which were weak for the cool sentiment behind them. And Heniel was wise enough to know that their love was not infinite. It might linger now, it might grow and seethe with wretched fire, but it would not last. In the end, the choice was hers. She could repent. Or she could be damned. And it would only take a moment. It would only take one moment…

More tears. They were warm on her cheeks now. A blessing of her sin, the relic of her destruction. She felt the cold openness of free will, the wayward wondering and indecision. She had a choice. She could choose…

_Choose._

"I have been frightened," Heniel admitted in a great rush of breath.

Gabriel jerked, his body tensing. She had surprised him. Whatever he had expected, it was not a full confession. But his fortitude was unassuming, his patience inherent and he listened.

And Heniel was comforted…for a while, at least.

"He has changed," she said.

Gabriel leaned forward, his eyes intent. "Who?"

"Your brother, Michael," she replied. "I do not recognize what I once saw in him. He is a careless creature. He seems to have turned away from his faith."

"And you…have you-"

"Never." There was a strange glimmer in her vision, a dreamy haziness that beguiled her senses. Heniel despised the subtle softness of the night. She longed for hard stone, for a reality that was uncompromising. "I am frightened," she repeated. "I am so very frightened."

Gabriel sighed, his expression far-off. It was an earthy night, the Garden haunted by the shadows of the first sinners, Adam and Eve. Heniel looked out over the serene landscape and resigned herself as a traitor. Was it her desperation that had led her to betray Michael? Or did she simply wish to see him fall?

_Let go. Why won't you let me go?_

Gabriel turned to her. He lifted his hand off her knuckles and beheld her with a certain disdain, a hate usually reserved for women such as Delilah.

Heniel flinched.

"Do you love him?" he asked.

Heniel took a moment to weigh her answer before she replied. "He has made it impossible not to," she finally said, remembering all of Michael's lingering caresses, the sweet things he had said to make her smile.

_Let me go. Now will you let me go?_

Heniel burst into tears. She wept against Gabriel's shoulder and he accepted her, the wretched leper.

"I pity you," the brooding angel said. He stroked the sensitive place between her wings. "But you are contrite."

Heniel did not respond. Her confusion was akin to madness. It muted her senses, left her adrift, longing for a safe harbor. There was a greater love, she knew, than Michael's. It was one she had scorned of late. One that she had missed.

Gabriel leaned closer to her ear. She heard his voice in the dark. Calling. Calling her home. "You know what must be done," he said.

Heniel nodded.

"Are you frightened now?" he asked her.

Heniel wrapped her fingers around his shoulder, comforted, but only for an instant. She had stopped falling. She was lying broken on the earth, her blood on the stone, the lofty sky mocking her from above.

Michael had finally let go.

"No," she said. "I'm not."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I don't think Gabriel really had to persuade Heniel to snitch on Michael. She was looking for an out from day one.

Thanks for reading! If you happen to have a free moment, please take the time to leave me a review. I always love hearing from readers. Your feedback is truly inspiring.

Part Seventeen should be posted in roughly twelve days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!


	17. Part 16 Venom

**Author's Note: **Sorry this chapter took so long! I've been having some health issues lately and haven't had much energy to write, even though I'd like to.

Before we begin, I would like to thank all my patient readers and reviewers, **saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. I truly appreciate your continued support and encouragement! I do hope you enjoy this update.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 16 Venom **

At about a quarter after eleven, the bar tender came out from behind his counter, his stride purposeful, and approached the piano.

"I just spoke with Frank," he told Sam, referencing the owner of their little establishment with a sort of obnoxious pride that rubbed the musician the wrong way. "He wants me to shut 'er down. No one's coming in tonight."

"How rude," Helen noted. She was leaning against the upright, looking like Liz Taylor in _Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, _an old lush with just a touch of class.

The bar tender scratched his ear, unfazed. "I'm gonna lock up."

Sam smiled at the kid, relieved that the night was finally coming to a close and he could return to the reality that he found so comforting. It was an early Christmas present, really, a respite from Helen and her wisdom, which was just a bit too eerie for his liking. In days to come, Sam was sure he'd wonder whether he had caught a glimpse of the world that existed on the fringes, the one that you could only see out of the corner of your eye, or sometimes, if you were lucky, in your dreams.

Sam relaxed. "That's fine," he said. "Let me just get my coat."

The bar tender seemed equally relieved that the he wasn't going to put up a fight. Helen, of course, was another story. Cautiously, the kid reached forward and plucked her empty glass off the top of the upright. The light caught the tumbler as he moved, showing the cigarette butt nestled in the bottom, the water from the melted ice muddied by shreds of tobacco and ash. The bar tender's eyebrows shot up beneath his shaggy bangs. Helen smiled beatifically.

"I'll get your check," the bar tender muttered. It was too late for him to pretend not to notice the cigarette butt.

"Tab, please," Helen replied with provoking cheek.

The bar tender didn't argue, but slunk away, his frayed jeans hanging off his hips, loose change jingling off-key in his pockets.

Sam laughed to himself, giddy and amused by the overall oddness of the night. He closed his binder of sheet music and shut the lid of the piano with a definitive click. Vaguely, he wondered if the drugstore by his house was still open. He needed to pick up some wrapping paper for his niece's gift. Plopping it in one of those chintzy bags seemed a little cheap now, and she was his only niece, after all.

Sam tucked his sheet music under his arm, heading towards the kitchen where the staff kept their coats and hats on hooks in the store room.

Helen followed, an appropriate shadow. She put her hand on his shoulder.

"I owe you a drink," she said, her lips devilishly close to his ear. "Come up to my apartment for a little while."

Sam froze, the weight of his binder pulling down his arm. He tried to remember the last time he had been invited up to a woman's apartment and how different his reaction might have been then. It was difficult to admit that he was in fact frightened now, having sighted the route of his escape only to have it blockaded at the very last moment.

Helen had a strange power about her, a whisper of suggestion that called to his baser instincts, that teased his curiosity and left him dependent on her. She was holding him in thrall, like that fairy maiden in Keats. Slowly, her hand played along his shoulder and down his arm, her movements chaste, but insistent. She was showing herself as desperate. She was pressing her sticky fingers to his skin, all too mortal, although her eyes had that far-off look about them that made him continually second-guess reality as he knew it.

"Please, Sam," Helen implored and she was truly begging, showing him her weak underbelly. "Can't you do this one thing for me?"

Sam shifted his binder from one arm to the other, knocking her hand off his shoulder as he did so. He had one question left to put to her, a worry that had been nagging at him all evening.

"Will you hurt me if I do?" he demanded.

Helen's face softened, the lines around her eyes lessening. She had a look of surprising innocence about her, a wounded vulnerability that ran deep, something that Sam had tried to ignore because it made her more…_human_.

There were scars covering her wounds, marks of a battle she had lost and a surrender she had been forced to endure. Her power, he realized, was a lie his mind had contrived to make their interaction more manageable.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. Sam knew that he had inadvertently laid the lash against her flesh, had driven the hurt deeper with his insensitivity.

Helen seemed stunned. She shook her head. "I wouldn't," she mumbled. Her tough mouth was suddenly weak, toothless. She chewed on her lower lip. "You don't have to," she said, "if you really don't want to."

Sam felt inexplicably guilty. His desire to help had already conquered his instincts and he knew then that he was going to take her up on her offer. It seemed like the right thing to do, after all, a penance that didn't belong to him, but that he had made his own. And she had been brave enough to ask for his help, to reach for his hand through a darkness he didn't understand.

Sam's grip on his binder loosened. A few leaflets of music tumbled free and fell at his feet. He sighed. Somehow, the roles had been reversed. Somehow, he was saving an angel.

"Do you have tea?" he asked.

Helen pushed her chin out, frowning. "Chamomile and ginger," she replied.

Sam stooped to pick up his sheet music. "I'll have coffee."

* * *

><p>Helen's apartment was a bit of a disappointment. Sam didn't know exactly what he had expected. Perhaps some tight chamber fogged with incense, or maybe even a Spartan room with monastic overtones, rough-hewn furniture and folk-art crosses on the walls. The small studio above the restaurant, however, didn't even come close to impressive. In his mind, Helen hadn't made the most of her limited space. Her kitchen was almost entirely taken up by a round table, making it hard to maneuver between the sink and the chair. Her dish towels had chickens on them and he noticed that she used the same soap that he liked.<p>

She had a closet-like bathroom at the back of the apartment and the futon in her living room, he guessed, doubled as her bed. Standing just inside the door with his sheet music still tucked under his arm, Sam recognized a woman's touch when he saw it. Her furniture was a mismatch of dark tones, as were her walls. She had a couple of bookcases that looked like they might've come from a fancy antique store in Newport. The only piece he really liked was the old chest she had across from the futon. Peering curiously at the walls, Sam found the prints to be unremarkable, pictures of women in old-fashioned clothing, vintage postcards from European cities, not a religious item in sight.

His arm ached with the weight of his binder and with some reluctance, he deposited it carefully on the side table by the door where Helen kept her keys in crafty-looking ceramic bowl.

Helen had swooped into her kitchen and she was hesitating by the stove, a few of her spindly fingers tucked underneath the handle of her kettle. She looked over her shoulder at him.

"Forget the coffee," she said. "I think you deserve something a little stronger." She dropped the kettle back on the burner, squeezing around her table until she was in the living room by the squat cabinet she kept between her bookshelves. "Vodka or gin," she offered, prying open the glass door, "pick you poison."

"That's a weird way of putting it." Sam dropped his hands into his pockets, trying to ignore the tiny hairs on the back of his neck that were standing on end. Helen looked on the verge of being offended, so he rushed to add, "I can't, I still have to drive home tonight."

She let the door of the cabinet swing against her shin. "You wouldn't dare," she said, enough of a taunt in her voice to make his stomach hut.

Sam shrugged. "Buses don't run this late."

"No, you're right," Helen conceded. She reached over to her right and pulled the long cord that kept the blind down over her only window. "Especially not in this," she said.

Sam took a step towards the window. Even past her fire escape, he had a good view of the town's main street. There was an inlet a couple of blocks away and from this height, he could see the blinking light on the toll booth. Snow had obscured the rest of the bridge though, had already blanketed the cars parked perpendicular on the main street with about eight inches. And every now and then, when the wind blew real strong, the light on the toll booth disappeared.

Sam felt like the world had turned against him. His hands balled into fists, causing his pockets to bulge.

Helen let go of the cord and it swung across the sill of the window. "I might have some Bailey's left, if you don't like the vodka or gin. You're Irish right, aren't you Sam?"

"Vodka," he said weakly, surrendering to the inevitable and sinking down onto her futon even though he hadn't been invited to sit.

"Wonderful." Helen took two glasses from the top shelf of the cabinet. "I prefer the gin, to be honest."

Sam watched as she fixed him his drinks, not bothering with ice or even a little tonic to cut the vodka. There was a brisk practicality about her, he realized, something that he recognized in himself. Strangely enough, she reminded him of a soldier.

Helen handed him his drink, their fingertips touching as the glass passed from her to him. For a moment, Sam thought she was going to drop down on the futon next to him and he prepared to make room, but the woman seated herself on the edge of the old chest. She looked once at her drink, sniffed and then glanced up at him, the light from the toll bridge blinking fitfully behind her head. Her hair was framed with the glow and Sam saw all the lines in her flesh. He saw the plum-colored bruises under her eyes and the way she moved her body, as if she were disturbed by the feel of her own flesh which had begun to hang from her bones as age encroached.

Sam's own knuckles were sore, reminding him that arthritis was on the way. At this rate, he might only have a few years left at the piano, if he was lucky. Vaguely, he remembered something his old music teacher had told him about Beethoven going deaf. He flexed his fingers, thinking it was worse to still hear the music without being able to actually play it.

Helen reached back and scratched one of her shoulder blades. For an instant, Sam had a vision of wings.

"You're sitting where he did," she said. Her glass of gin was carefully balanced on the edge of the chest, but Sam thought she was just tipsy enough to knock it over and onto the floor.

"Who?" he asked, slightly distracted. Without thinking, he touched his dry lips to his glass and let the vodka hit his teeth. The liquor shocked his tongue, left his taste buds numb and his throat burning.

Helen dropped her hand back onto her lap. "Michael. He came to see me two nights ago and he sat there, right where you're sitting now. I was looking at him for a long time. It's a shame that he hasn't changed at all. He makes me feel guilty for getting old."

Sam felt a chill climb his spine and it had little to do with the weather. There was an unexpected reverence in Helen's voice when she spoke of this Michael, a sort of hushed awe, softened by what might have been lingering affection. It reminded him of his mother, in a way, when she used to talk about his father after he had died.

Helen picked up her gin, considered it, and then put it back on the edge of the chest with an air of disgust. She dropped her face into her hands and her sigh could have been sob, a muted sign of some grief that Sam was captivated by.

It was awful to see an angel cry. He felt bad for being disappointed by her, for expecting that airy fantasy of wings and a halo and benign grace that seemed to belong more in a stained glass window or a Renaissance painting than in reality.

"Do you miss him?" Sam asked. He took another sip of his drink to dull the sharp edges of his resistance, that all too human doubt that remained within him.

Helen wiped away her tears with the side of her hand, rubbing away the last of her mascara until it had smeared on her cheeks. "At first I did," she said, "but then it was a relief to be without him. We were not kind to each other. I am proud to say that I left him bleeding, at least. I was able to hurt him as much as he hurt me."

"You're a vindictive bitch," Sam noted with a quick grin. "The kind that keys cars and slashes tires and burns her ex's clothes on the lawn."

"You speak like a man of experience," Helen laughed, although her tone was watery.

Sam looked passed her bony shoulder and out the window. Snow had piled in a drift against the sill and the screen was peppered with sticky flakes. He remembered when he was a kid and used to pray for storms like this because he hated school. But that was before his mom had become a drunk and he learned to find a refuge in the classroom, where he could rely on such certain things like numbers and grammar and the bells that sounded every period. And suddenly, he was mad at his mother, mad because she had taken away that sweet pleasure of childhood, the enjoyment he got from simple things like snow days.

Sam took another drink from his glass, his breath fogging the rim. "No," he said, "I guess there's nothing wrong with holding a grudge."

Helen looked at him quickly. "I'm not sure if I'm relieved to hear you say that," she replied. "You were made in God's image, Sam. You are supposed to forgive."

"Oh yeah?" he snorted, a little annoyed at her sudden high-handedness. "And what about you?"

It was impossible for him to read her reaction at first. Her expression was fluid. It masked a deep insecurity and yet revealed a vulnerability that was shocking, a hint of the human in her that he had not seen in a long time. She was weak, Sam decided. And she was only really coming to grips with it now.

Helen stood, her movements restless and she knotted her fingers together. "Michael apologized to me when he visited," she said in a monotone voice, as if she were reading a passage out of a book with no real feeling or attachment to the material. "But even though he said he was sorry, I don't think he was looking for forgiveness. Is that arrogance, not looking for someone to forgive you? Or does it take more strength to offer the pardon?"

Sam felt as those she had posed a hopeless question, a riddle that wasn't supposed to be answered because it had no solution at all. He lifted one of his shoulders in a shrug. "It's all a little over my head," he said noncommittally.

Helen's face went shrewd. "Don't sell yourself short," she muttered. "And don't bullshit me."

Sam leaned forward, his glass heavy in his hand. He was annoyed that she had second-guessed him, seen past his ruse of ignorance into what was actually a deferral. "You're asking too much of me," he bit back.

Helen paced across the living room floor. "Only because you have asked absolutely nothing of yourself," she replied.

Sam was about interrupt, scorned by her ridicule which was a lot sharper than he had expected it to be, but Helen was quicker. She turned on him.

"Would you forgive your mother?" she asked.

Silence. Sam's grip loosened on his glass and it fell at his feet. He felt the vodka splash his pants and socks, soaking into her circular area rug. He flexed his fingers again, disheartened by the stiffness and his own mortality.

Helen jerked her chin at him. "It hurts when we really get down to it, doesn't it?" she said, her tone nothing less than accusatory. "We hate to be merciful, because it's too much like weakness." She approached the futon and toed his fallen glass, nudged it with her right foot.

Sam flopped back against the couch, if only because he didn't want to be near her just then. There was a disease in Helen, a consuming sickness that made her repulsive. Sam wondered if that was what the Bible meant by the mark of Cain. It wasn't enough to see it, but to feel it, the presence of a pariah, turned his stomach.

"You like to pervert things, don't you?" he asked. "You like to watch my misery because it's a whole lot prettier than yours. Hell," he laughed, his hands slapping his thighs, "I was just some poor kid with a drunk for a mother…but you, you got kicked out of the one place everyone is supposed to be happy."

Helen flinched and for one triumphant moment, Sam thought he might have cut her a little. What weak grace she had, that sleekness, that fast-talking smoothness gave way to frustration.

"I only wanted your help," she said, dropping onto the arm of the futon, her knees perilously close to his.

Sam thought he felt the underside of her heel graze his calf. "So said the snake to the little girl," he replied.

Helen blinked her raccoon eyes. "You still think I'm Lucifer?"

Sam rubbed his hands together, feeling cruel for the first time that evening. It bothered him that he wasn't uncomfortable with the emotion, which had fallen over him like a familiar, well-worn sweater. He had no experience with malice, but was shocked to find how easy it could be…and how attractive.

"I was talking about a story I heard once," he said. "It's a parable…you go for that sort of thing, don't you? One of the guys in my unit told it to me while we were over in Vietnam, in the jungles. I'd never been out of New England and I was having nightmares about spiders and bugs and all those snakes, the kind that just sneak up on you, hanging from some low branch on a tree with their black, pinprick eyes. My buddy, he told me this old story about a snake out in a winter storm…a good New England winter storm and he's going freeze to death if he doesn't find someplace warm soon. And along comes this sweet little girl and she has her winter coat on. The snake slithers right up and he asks her, 'Can you carry me inside your coat until I warm up?' The little girl, she's not too sure about this. She asks the snake if he's planning on biting her and he says, 'No, no, just tuck me inside your coat and I won't move.' So the little girl, she's a pretty brave kid, she picks up the snake and carries him around for a bit. It's all going good until suddenly, she feels him strike. He bites her right then and there, even though she'd been saving his life. Well, anyway, the snake slips out of her coat and the little girl asks him why he would hurt her when he promised not to. And the snake, listen to this, the snake says, 'You knew what I was when you found me.' Huh? _You knew what I was when you found me_."

Sam's lips tingled when he spoke the last words and he smiled, pleased by his yeoman's art, his simple logic which was surely enough to confuse even the sphinx.

But Helen, she smiled right along with him. She just kept smiling and smiling and she leaned forward across the futon, her hand on his shoulder, the angel reminding him to do right, or the devil tempting him to do wrong. She smiled when she drew close to him and she said, "I think it's too late, Sam. Because you know I'm already inside your coat."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>The fairy maiden Sam references comes from _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ by John Keats, a poem in which a wild, cunning fairy woman bewitches a knight to fall in love with her and then leaves him alone to forever mourn her absence. And while Helen isn't trying to make Sam fall in love with her, I thought she was just as sly and ruthless. ;)

Thanks so much for reading! If you happen to have some free time, please leave me a review. I'm hard at work on the next chapter and will try to have it posted as soon as possible. Until then, take care and be well!


	18. Part XVII Reprisal

**Author's Note: **Now we'll finally find out why Heniel was _really_ kicked out of Heaven, not the poor-me, sugarcoated version she's been telling Sam all along. ;)

As always, I would like to thank my dedicated and amazingly supportive readers/reviewers, **saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. Also, if you've added this story to your favorites/author alerts lists, thank you as well! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XVII Reprisal **

Heniel was frightened. She did not know what to expect from her fear, which had invaded her soul with insidious ease, which was fluid enough to flood what remained of her doubt and fill her with a perverse sort of courage that had no purpose. It was a paradox to feel both weakened and yet strangely indestructible. She was straddling some ugly chasm, with neither side offering the promise of happiness or even safety. Confusion had quickly become her greatest foe, because now she had to be absolutely certain, she had to be _absolutely _steadfast in her convictions. There was no room for error. No margin for mistake. There was only one soul that could be saved, and God, Father, it would have to be hers.

Heniel knew she couldn't rely on time to bolster her insipid confidence. Her conversation with Gabriel had not been veiled in gauzy illusions. Determination was something she lacked, although not encouragement. And she couldn't wait, she couldn't chance a delay until the last of her bravery failed her. Heniel was selfish in a way, choosing to save her own soul. But she was wise as well. Michael should have never called her simple-minded. And he should have never fallen in love with her, because they both knew it would come to a shattering end.

Not before someone fell, however. Not before at least one of them was noble enough to be sacrificed. And she had never been particularly noble. Michael was, though. It was what she admired in him the most. Or once had, until she realized that it could be used against him.

It would be simple to exploit Michael's trust to foster her own deception, but Heniel told herself, over and over again, that this was not a betrayal. She could not violate what no longer existed. She could not sin against one who was already damned. Thinking back to their plunge from the mountaintop, Heniel realized that fate itself had a certain divinity to it. She had always been comfortable with the role of avenger, someone who did not spill blood but restored. Someone who knew enough of salvation to recognize it even in the darkest places. Fire, after all, did not necessarily blacken. It cleansed as well.*

But there was a problem, of course, in letting Michael go. There was a very potent conflict within her, because Heniel loved him too. It would be a mutual sacrifice, one that would leave her broken, appropriately chastised for her sins, which had the potential to haunt her for a lifetime. If she would let them, if she did not let go…

_Just let me go…_

It was not a betrayal and she was not a traitor, only motivated by a love that could not sustain itself and would claim at least one victim before its devastating fury was glutted. Heniel knew what she was doing, she was saving them both. And Michael would love her for it, when he realized. Michael would love her forever when he finally understood.

The opportunity came sooner than she had hoped for. Despite her self-assurance, Heniel could not shake her guilty trepidation. She had been strolling along the outer ramparts of the battlements, enjoying the labyrinthine, circular route of the narrow walkway. It was dawn and Heniel started on the western side of the citadel, where the night still lived and she had only the passive stars for company. But as she rounded the sheer wall of a rising tower, she found him standing at the other end. Michael did not seem to mind the early streaks of amber sunlight that warmed the stones. He was gazing into the glare and his shadow, high and rounded, fell on the ground behind him.

Heniel stopped for a moment and watched him. For the first time she was daunted by his beauty, left breathless by his quiet majesty, which was certainly grander than Gabriel's, but also tempered by a humility that seemed oddly mismatched with his penchant for disobedience.

She lingered close to the edge of the walkway, tempted by the seductive wind that threaded through her wings and lifted her feathers with an almost erotic caress. Michael's hair was a tawny auburn in the sunrise and she saw him through tones of sepia and brass. The morning air tasted sugary, heavy with the scents of summer, plums and grass and pollen. Heniel felt dizzy. She leaned against the crenellated wall.

He must have heard her wings grazing the granite. His shoulders hitched as he turned in her direction. In the instant it took their eyes to meet, Heniel thought that he regretted her intrusion. His expression was meditative and when he gazed at her, he was looking beyond, straight through her fallacious intentions, which she was rightly ashamed of. Slowly, he held out his hand.

"I hope you were looking for me," Michael said.

She touched her temple, her jaw. "I was."

Heniel took one step towards him. The sun was unkind when it hit her eyes and she had to look away, a grimace showing her solitary pain. She wondered if he would forgive her in time. She wondered if he would forgive her at all.

When she was close enough, Michael reached forward and curled his hand around her arm. The fleshly pads of his fingers were flush against her wrists, the warmth in her veins throbbing against his touch. The sticky yet sweet brush of skin on skin made her throat constrict. She realized then that there was so much she had wanted, so much more than he had ever promised to give her…

Michael appraised her, his expression perfectly roguish. He was solider at heart and he could not soften the raw power she found so irresistible in him. Her shoulder pressed against his flank as she moved to stand next to him, ashamed at being exposed to his judgment. What could he possibly be looking for in her that he had not already seen?

"The sun puts color into your cheeks," Michael observed. He tilted his head to the side, jocose and grinning. "You do not always have to appear so repentant," he chided.

"Perhaps that is a sign of my arrogance," she said. Her laughter was fluttery, delicate and sheer like a wasp's wings. "I've learned to live with my wickedness."

"Wicked." He clearly liked the word and when he spoke, his moist tongue flicked out along his lips. "I promise you that we were never wicked."

"But can you promise me that we never will be?" Heniel asked.

Michael drew back as if she had spoken profanely. "I am almost saddened," he said, "when I realize what I have done to you."

Her heart stopped. She was stunned by his reticence, for she had never believed that Michael was capable of questioning his own actions. His intemperance was dangerous in that way, mindless, a fever that raged and burned, and yes, maybe _blackened_. But he was reconsidering her now and he placed his hand on her face, his thumb stroking her jaw and coming to rest underneath her chin. Her mouth quivered. She didn't know why he trusted her. She had never given him reason to.

"You are not at peace," he said, "and the fault is mine."

The sunlight was between them. It bled into the air and Heniel was not immune to the heat of it, that sultry ripeness fermented by her own lust. She could not stand his tenderness now, the soothing affection that would make it more difficult for her to let go. Without thinking, Heniel grasped his free hand and held it close to her stomach, his knuckles just grazing the undersides of her breasts.

Her breathing quickened. She pushed herself up on her toes until their noses were nearly touching. Michael's lips curved into a sad smile, the dimples in his cheeks showing as his mouth moved.

"I do not know whether or not I should ask for your forgiveness," he said.

Heniel dragged his hand down lower, closer to her belt where the weight of her sword pulled at her side. Her forearm brushed his hip bone that jutted out from underneath his leather fauld. She let her belly touch his loins.

Michael's gasp was muted, a small sign of weakness that brought a stain of red to his cheeks and flushed his throat. Heniel flinched. She wasn't brave, she wasn't brave, she wasn't brave enough for this…

"I love you," she said and watched the great revelation unfold in his eyes, the spark of wild hope that was almost sinful to quench. "And I'll forgive you for what you've done…if only you promise that someday you might forgive me the same."

"A mutual sin," Michael rasped. He pressed his forehead against hers.

"A mutual sacrifice," Heniel whispered. And in that instant, she remembered what the nephilim had looked like before she was killed. Like her. Like Michael…

Heniel kissed him.

It was the most selfish moment of her life, when she let her desire defeat faith, when she held onto him for just a second longer, before she would be forced to let go. Michael released her hand and rested his fingers on the other side of her jaw. His fingers framed her face. Heniel closed her eyes so that he would not see her tears. She moved her head to the side, his lips tugging at the corner of her mouth, nibbling at her cheek and neck.

Michael muttered a half-coherent phrase. His chest was close enough to hers that she could feel the breath leave his body. She pressed herself to him and his wings swept around her, shading them both from the searching sun that shone on their guilty tryst.

The tears trailed down her face, slowing as they followed the curve of her nose and pooling in the narrow well of flesh above her lips. She shifted against him until she was certain that her hand was free and she let her fingers move along the line of her heavy belt, across, then down, down….

One last time Michael kissed her. One last time she was his. And then Heniel drew her sword.

Instinct made Michael lunge back, but his sudden movement still did not shield his shock from her. She saw the quick confusion in his eyes, his misunderstanding not yet polluted by mistrust. Heniel already wanted to tell him that she was sorry. She wanted him to experience her regret, the doubt that was keener than the carefully honed edge of her blade. But it was too late. Michael, she knew, wouldn't understand…not until it was over.

_Forgive me_, she tried to say, but the intention was weak on her tongue. Instead, she steadied herself, judging his balance as she decided which side would be best to strike first. But even then, Heniel did not have the heart to use her weapon. She felt the tip of her sword trailing across the stone ramparts. Her arm sagged at the elbow.

"Forgive me," she managed to speak this time, but only as she rammed into him, the rounded crook of her wing catching him high on his left shoulder.

Michael stumbled and she was strangely satisfied when she heard him groan in pain. Heniel did not pause, but followed through with the rest of her body weight. She opened her wings and with one powerful thrust, drove him nearer to the edge of the ramparts. It wasn't until the heels of his boots teetered on the precipice that Michael finally seemed to grasp her purpose.

"Heniel." He was pleading with her, his voice nearly swallowed up with a regret that mirrored her own.

She closed her eyes so that she would not have to see him fall. "Like Lucifer," she muttered and raised her sword.

His hand snagged her wrist and before she could catch herself, Heniel fell into him. She grunted as her chest slammed into his, her weight bringing them both over the edge of the rampart.

"Let go!" she screamed, the words ripped from her in one final, fatal protest.

But Michael's eyes were hard, flint to his fire and he rose against her, beating his wings until they were both carried back onto the ramparts. With the ground beneath her feet, Heniel remembered her sword and she thrust wildly at him. The side of her hand grazed his temple and Michael still had his fingers on her wrist, forcing her arm away with his brute strength.

Heniel thought she heard the bone snap and she dropped her sword. The metal rang out on the stone, her death knell, and she screamed again.

"Michael, please!"

But even he wouldn't listen to her beg. Sweeping his arm upward, he caught her beneath the jaw and she was thrown into the air. _Falling_, Heniel thought, _he's finally let me go_. But the sky didn't open beneath her, only the unforgiving walkway of the ramparts as she crashed to the ground, her body bruised and her knees scraped and bleeding. Michael was standing over her and he had her sword, the tip of it touching the crown of her head.

"Heniel," he said in a broken, bleeding voice. "Heniel." And then he began to cry.

The sentinel angels who had been guarding the tower came racing down to meet them and she could feel the vibrations of their heavy footfalls on the spiral stairs. Heniel moved her head slowly against the stone, her teeth colored with blood. She closed her eyes and wept.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Poor Heniel. She's terribly misguided. Unfortunately, she seems to think that violence is the best solution to every problem. I suppose she's too much of a warrior to believe otherwise.

Thanks so much for reading! There are only three more chapters left, eek! The next update will be posted in roughly two weeks. Until then, take care and be well!

_* This line _"Fire, after all, did not necessarily blacken. It cleansed as well" _is a play on the line _"Fire doesn't cleanse, it blackens" _from the film adaption of the Silent Hill series._


	19. Part XVIII Original Sin

**Author's Note: **I think this chapter nearly killed me. Because of its rather intense tone, it took me _forever _to write and the going was so slow. I thought I'd never finish it and yet, here we are. ;)

As always, I would just like to take a minute to thank all of my readers and **saichick**, who reviewed. I hope you enjoy this installment!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part XVIII Original Sin **

Michael did not stay to watch the sentinels lead Heniel away from the ramparts. He turned and hurried down the walkway, the echo of the wind still hissing in his ears. He shook as he thought of how close he had come to falling, a victim to their sin which had finally manifested itself in a terrifying reality. He had loved Heniel and she had loved him and what they shared had led to this, to this violence and screaming, kicking and thrashing, her body pinned beneath his…

It wasn't until Michael had left the walkway and climbed down the stairs to the ground level of the battlements that he realized he was still holding Heniel's sword. He dropped it, not bothering to rest the hilt against the wall or carry it to the armory, where he was headed. The corridor followed a rectangular course, the passageway surprisingly airy with the wall on the left punctuated by arched windows. But Michael sought the deeper recesses of the building, the womb of the structure, where he could surround himself with a closeness that almost mimicked maternal comfort

He stopped just outside the door to the armory. It was a quiet, cluttered alcove with stone walls and a floor of serene blue marble. Michael closed his eyes for an instant. He could feel his heart pulsing, his eyelids quivering with each beat, the blood hot in his veins, not unlike the moments when he had held Heniel close to him and felt the silken planes of her flesh. But there was no hiding in the dark now. No cowering. He had been embraced by the light, his stains exposed and he felt nude. Vaguely, Michael remembered Adam and Eve sewing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, their hands still sticky with the juice of the apple. He opened and closed his fingers. Sweat pooled in his palms, slick and decidedly sensuous, too much like the skin of a snake…

_What have I done?_

"Brother?" It was Gabriel's thunderous voice that pulled him back from the brink.

Michael's eyes snapped open. Gabriel was nearby. He had found his errant brother and cornered him. It took Michael a moment to realize that he was not alone, and the realization made him feel all the more guilty.

"Is it true?" Gabriel asked plainly.

Michael was aware of the wall behind him, his wings grazing the tiers of carefully laid stone. Panic made him forgetful, blinding him to his brother's genuine concern that seemed intensely antagonistic.

"It was sudden," was all he could say. "I nearly fell…she pushed me. There was a look in her eyes that I didn't understand. Not madness, but release. It was sudden, Gabriel. I almost couldn't stop myself from falling."

And it was all too easy for him, in that close and breathless corridor, to remember the whisper of the wind as it rushed to embrace his body. The feeling of weightlessness remained, rooted in the pit of his stomach. He could not shake that final, fatal gleam in Heniel's eyes, her expression of regret…and relief, as she pushed him over the edge.

"Heniel is a formidable warrior, if only because she was never particularly merciful," Gabriel replied. His long shadow moved across the floor as he threw his weight from foot to foot. "You must have stirred something of pity in her…otherwise fortune might not have been in your favor."

"Fortune," Michael bleated. He was unable to meet his brother's gaze. "It was sudden," he echoed, relishing in the relative safety of his words.

"But I am certain she must have been provoked," Gabriel said. He was driving home the point of his suspicion and Michael saw it for what it was, laid bare, an accusation crafted to exorcise what they both knew he was hiding.

It was then that he realized he was committed to lying, not only to his brother, but to himself. Deceit was not a practice he was familiar with, but Michael clung to it, his refuge in a storm. Heniel would understand, of course. She had learned to lie as well.

"She gave me no indication of distress," he replied. "She showed no sign that she was angry."

Gabriel exhaled once through his nose. "Heniel is nothing if not predictable," he muttered.

"You think she had just cause to attack me?"

"I think she was desperate and confused."

"We agree on that point," Michael said. "She always was…simple." He was surprised at the pain he experienced in deriding her, the lover he had comforted with his own confidence in her worth. "It was a shock," he said, fumbling over the words. "I trusted her."

Gabriel's expression was shrewd. He had long perfected the look of the skeptic, although his cynicism seemed strange when paired with his obvious piety. Michael felt all the fine hairs on the back of his neck bristle. A chill raced through him, dampening the heat in his stomach and on his skin.

"Heniel is loyal," Gabriel said at length. His elbow brushed the sore spot underneath Michael's ribs where Heniel had first struck him in her flailing, frightened fury. "Why would she betray you?"

Michael was irked by the insinuation. He winced at the pain, both within and without. His guilt was a thin film over his lips and mouth, a delicate seal that any breath or word might break. Michael said nothing in reply to Gabriel. He knew he could not bear to disappoint his brother.

_What have I done?_

The light tapping of fleet footsteps was enough to end their conversation for the moment. Michael wasn't certain if he appreciated the interruption or not. The hour was perilouse, a time of painful waiting and when the waiting was over, revelation. He feared what would be brought into the light of righteousness and he was driven by a primal need to cover his nakedness, the dark, scaly patches on his flesh that were so much like a leper's skin.

There was an iron spiral staircase at the end of the corridor and Sariel moved down the steps, the hem of her gown following her in a trail of fragile white silk. She was a porcelain creature, bland and timid like early spring, with a lithe frame that sharply contrasted with Heniel's general sturdiness.

Gabriel turned in anticipation of Sariel's approach, but Michael stayed still. It was remarkable how selfish danger had rendered him and all the tender endearments he had once given to Heniel rang sourly in his ears. It was rare for him to play the part of the fool. And it was impossible for him to take on the guise of the sinner.

But someone, of course, would have to be blamed…

"I came because I was bidden," Sariel announced as she pattered down the corridor. She had absolutely no talent for guile, but was somewhat precocious in her constant efforts to be frank. "Our Lord called upon me to find you and bring you before the Throne. I believe," Sariel paused, her frost-grey wings fluttering once, "I believe you'll be asked to account for yourself."

Michael's sweat turned cold, his terror animalistic and unreal. The experience was foreign to him, he who loved his Father with a devotion that was unwavering, though not unquestioning. There were times in the past when he had been stubborn and wild enough to trespass the Lord's will, when he had tested His patience only to discover that God's mercy was indeed unending and His love more fixed than eternity.

And yet, it was his shame that daunted him and kept him from his Father's presence. He was Adam hiding in the Garden, a figure of besmirched grace. He was perfection gone awry. He was wicked and he had sinned if only because he had taken something that his Lord had loved and destroyed it.

It was not a sin to disappoint God, Michael knew, but at that moment, it felt so very close to damnation.

Gabriel glanced at his brother. "And Heniel?" he asked, invoking the name with barely discernible hesitation.

Sariel remained undisturbed, no ripple of suspicion changing her placid features. "She is with Raphael. You broke her arm," she added, glancing at Michael without a hint of malice.

He envied Sariel's purity and artless innocence, the gentle resonance of her fluting voice which put him to shame. But there was another ache within him. The grinding pain in his ribs was paltry compared to his sense of violation. He had destroyed his virtue when he hurt Heniel, employing violence against the one angel he could not make an enemy out of because he loved her. And despite her treacherous outburst, Michael wondered if he would ever be able to find fault in her actions. He had wounded her first, after all. He had pulled her down when they fell, and now still refused to let go.

Michael wavered. There was a decision to be made, a choice that was less clear than deciding between right and wrong.

_Her…or him._

Gabriel seemed to sense his upset and he softened his rigid stance, becoming once again the affectionate brother who expressed more sympathy than condemnation. "I will go with you," he said, "if you like."

Michael stared at the empty space of corridor before him. He wondered if this was how Heniel felt when he conquered her. And he wondered why, even now, he couldn't feel sorry for her.

"You will never forgive me," he whispered to her from afar.

But Gabriel misunderstood. "I will," he assured his brother.

In that, Michael took no comfort.

* * *

><p>There was no room for the sorrowful heart when in the presence of his Father and Michael gladly loosed his grief in exchange for undimmed awe. He took a moment, along with Gabriel and Sariel, to remove his boots before entering the Inner Sanctum, the soles of his feet tingling with the glorifying hum of all the Heavenly choirs. The ground was hallowed, a vision of light and air and matter transformed by the essence of the Divine, which even Michael's angelic mind could not fully comprehend. And yet, surrounded by the rising cries of a thousand hallelujahs and hosannas and the graceful flickering of golden-edged wings, he forgot the nearness of the other angels and came only into himself.<p>

Standing before the Lord was intensely private. It was the revelation of the spirit in all its resplendent immortality. It was a vision of the resurrection and life everlasting. When looking upon the face of God, Michael found his gaze turned inwards toward his own soul. He could not define what he saw, only the fear that accompanied his sight and clouded his vision. The obscurity was new to him, he who had always been clear-minded and keen-eyed. And the departure was so much like damnation, like wandering alone, kept away from his faith, which he had somehow forgotten.

The hymns ceased when his Father spoke his name in greeting and Michael was renewed by His voice, which had first called him forth from oblivion into being.

For one blessed moment, his adoration of the Supreme eclipsed his discomfort. Michael lowered his head and tried to remember the old humility that had brought him to his knees before those who were certainly more humble. But he was missing a piece of himself, bewildered only by the joyous singing of the choirs and the cascading light that fell from on high.

It was strange, he thought, that he should feel like a foreigner in this familiar land.

His Father was patient. He asked Michael to account for his sadness, but even then the angel remained dumbfounded.

"Is it possible to feel lost, Father?" he asked with all the naivety of a child.

The Lord promised him that he wasn't.

Michael knew was greedy to look for more and yet he was still adrift. Or perhaps he had only fallen…

"Father, do you know me still?" he asked, even as he felt mired in perverse alienation.

The Lord promised him that He did.

And at once, Michael was embraced by the forgiveness he had secretly sought, not from his Father, but from himself. But his succor was short-lived when he heard her approach. Heniel's bare feet padded across the floor of the Sanctum and she swayed slightly as she walked, her shoulder held crooked as she nursed her wounded arm. She was a damaged creature, Michael observed with a twinge of unlikely pity. Abused and reduced from her natural resilience. And she had the look of a martyr about her, her eyes glazed with distance of thought and mind.

Heniel stopped when she drew even to him, the veil of her hair conveniently hiding most of her profile. Michael remembered the numerous times he had looked upon her with an all too mortal longing. But now she had lost her esteem and all hr saw was a tired solider, scarred by too many surrenders.

But she was eager yet, intemperate in her fear. Heniel slipped forward onto her knees, her great wings hunched over her broad shoulders "Father, forgive me," she said.

Michael, however, said nothing. He thought that his silence would save him, born not from stubborn reticence, but from a deeper honesty. He had only his soul to show his Father, the place within him where he harbored neither truth nor falsehood, but only constant faith. Perhaps it would have been easier, he reasoned, if he had been able to see Heniel's soul from the first…

But that privilege belonged to God alone. From His Throne He observed the prostrate archangel. Their Lord's wrath and constant fury was a misconception, Michael felt. If only a true sinner were able to meet the gaze of his Maker, he might bear witness to the supreme tenderness of their Father's love, from which Divinity itself seemed to unfold.

The glorifying hymns of the choir had fallen to a hum that was almost more deafening for its subtle echo. Michael's flesh crawled with the sound, traveling down to the tips of his feathers like a brilliant charge. It took him a minute to realize that he was angry at Heniel for usurping the coveted role of the penitent. Forgiveness was the elixir he craved and Heniel had denied him again, as she had so many times before.

_This isn't a reconciliation_, Michael told himself. _No one pities the betrayer. _

When their Father asked Heniel why she sought forgiveness, Michael almost wanted to answer for her. He had the bruises on his ribs to prove her violence, along with the less distinct scars on his heart, which she had also tried to rend. It seemed very akin to sacrilege, to have her kneeling at the Throne, cloaked in the golden resplendence of the tiered choirs of all Heaven's angels.

Michael waited for her to reveal herself. He wanted to finally see Heniel for what she was.

She raised her head just enough so that he could see her cheeks glistening. Tears lingered near the curved well of flesh around her nose and the spectacle of her weeping before all of Heaven, before the lower angels and the Seven who stood before the Lord, was remarkably intimate. Heniel's mouth was a pale slit, her teeth flashing behind her lips as her tongue struggled with the heavy words.

"I am in love with Michael," she said, pausing for one terrible minute before adding, "Carnal love."

The statement was a clear profanity, something even the choirs couldn't drown out. Michael's skin was hot as he remembered how eager he had once been to trespass. But was it wicked for angels, children of God, to mimic the love they had witnessed in the children of Men? Was it even a sin?

It occurred to him that even if their congress was not an offense, they had made it so, with their own deceit and violence and willingness to betray. That, of course, was not love, born from the selfless soul, not the selfish. That was not what their Maker had ever intended for them.

Heniel seemed to be falling apart now that she had spoken. She had her hands clasped, her knuckles bulging. She spoke against her fingertips and Michael had to strain to here her. Her whispers were like incense. They rose to the high roof of the chamber and lingered as echoes amongst the rafters.

"I lost myself to him," Heniel explained. "I aspired to something that frightened me. I wavered under the burden of free will. I could not be like Michael and rebel. But I was lulled by such soft things. I took my faith elsewhere, into different shrines, laid my devotion in Michael and in the errant charms of the living world, for all that is imperfect is rendered beautiful by love…even a false love. It is my weakness and my sin because I allowed myself to blinded, to believe in the promise Michael gave to me and not Your eternal covenant. And then it was too late, my sin lay around me, sticking to my flesh like hot ashes. I saw the last of my grace sacrificed and remembered that single glint of fear on Lucifer's face when he fell. It seemed my only chance at salvation, to cast Michael from my sight. It wasn't a choice. There could only be one of us…"

She trailed off, utterly spent and Michael was surprised when it was Gabriel who stepped forward to support her, his strong arm curving underneath her wings and around her waist. The hulking angel had some affection for Heniel yet. Michael knew his brother must remember her as she was and the memory alone sustained him. But for what she had confessed, Michael didn't recognize her. She was a stranger to him…and that meant he did not have to love her anymore.

But he did still. That was the horror of it all. He loved her now and always would.

A deceptive stillness stole over the chamber. Wings fluttered and unfurled, bringing little breezes and breaths of air into the silence. Their Lord looked at Heniel for a long time and Michael understood why she trembled. It was the numinous experience in its purest form, being so close to the Divine. But then the trial was his and he found himself standing before his Father. Michael was proud and stubborn, defying not God, but what he had done to himself…and to her.

The angels in the choir stirred. Gabriel looked at him and Sariel and the others, too. Heniel, predictably, kept her eyes on the ground. Her trial was over and she was not malicious enough to watch Michael endure his.

His Father asked him first if he had wished to hurt Heniel.

The question sounded meaningless, as though it had been addressed to another, but Michael had a ready answer. "No," he replied truthfully.

His Father then asked him if he knew why Heniel would ever desire to cause him injury.

Again, Michael answered, "No."

Heniel moved a little when he spoke, her head jerking, but she still managed to keep her eyes on the ground. Michael wondered if she was furious yet, or if she ever had been truly angry with him. He remembered her expression as she pushed him over the edge of ramparts, the ingrained sorrow which had left such deep traces on her countenance.

Was it possible, he considered, that she still loved him?

The notion was strangely repulsive. Perhaps Heniel understood their love better than he ever had. Perhaps she knew, despite her supposedly simple nature, that in order to truly love him, to save him, she would have to betray him first. The break would be wrenching, the pain the same for the one who fell and the one who lost. She was, in a way, being selfless. It was then that Michael understood the true nature of sacrifice. And it was then, that he made his final choice.

_Him…or her. Her…or Him._

_Him._

Michael stood in the presence of his Lord and he opened himself, laid bare the soul he was ashamed of, but deserved forgiveness nonetheless. And his Father regarded him with the same understanding and perpetual mercy.

At length, his Lord asked him the final question. Did he also love Heniel?

And Michael repaid her betrayal, if only because he loved her.

"No," he said.

The silence that followed was true, with the choir seeming to dissolve into the higher reaches of the chamber and Gabriel setting his jaw and Heniel falling to her knees besides him, the breath stolen from her lungs.

But Michael could look only at his Father and between them passed that sacred knowledge. He knew that the Lord, who was ever-merciful and forgiving, would have allowed their love. And yet, Michael's denial proved that they had never truly deserved the gift. It was a mutual sin. A mutual sacrifice. In their love, they had not created the joy their Father wished for them, only the sorrow that still remained unrepentant.

Michael realized that Heniel had indeed been wise, for she had seen the end before it came. One would let go while the other fell and from the beginning, he had been the only one to hold her back. Not now, though. Not anymore.

Their Father announced His judgment from the Throne. Heniel had trespassed in her violence. She would be removed from Heaven, not damned, not pulled away from His love, but brought to a new realm of existence and perhaps, understanding. And the judgment itself was not a punishment, only a release, a relief for one who had fought so hard and struggled to maintain her grace that she had already far exceeded.

Michael wondered, in the years to come, if Heniel would ever see it that way.

She had to be led away from Gabriel though, her hand clinging to his in a final burst of desperation as she was taken to the edge of the chamber where the light of the sun seemed to float underneath and warm the highest rafters of the Inner Sanctum. Two angels of lower rank carefully stripped her of her garments, their ministrations respectful and untainted with shame.

But it was Raphael, the Healer, who was called upon to perform the final ritual. After breaking the joints that held Heniel's wings to her shoulders, he used his lancet to cut through the flaps of flesh.

It was not a violent act, though the blood splashed down her back and flank, the gaping holes in her shoulders an angry red. It was the ugliest thing Michael had ever seen, a deep mutilation of not only the flesh, but the soul. But Heniel had a way of being stoic. If she was indeed in pain, she did not show it. Her fingers dangled by her hips, rivulets of blood staining her creased palms and dripping from her nails, the red the same color of a ripe apple. Heniel turned her wrist slightly and the blood coated her inner arm.

_Suicide_, Michael thought. _Sacrifice._

He wanted her to look at him once before she fell. If he saw her face, he could perhaps lie to himself later, when true regret came to feast on him with its stinking, carrion breath. But if he saw her eyes he might be able to pretend that they were at peace. This was an end, after all, a resolution. They could both take solace in the outcome. Neither of them had been entirely ruined, just altered. And neither of them had been damned.

But Heniel was nearly as sadistic as he had proved himself to be. She kept her head to the West, where the sun would soon set and she stood with her toes on the platform. She lacked only the impetus, the final sense of abandonment that would take her into the world below.

And Gabriel, he who had always been her protector, the guardian of a lost angel, stepped forward into Heniel's shadow. His feet were colored with the splash of her blood and when he touched his hands to her back, he was stained by the source of her sin. It only took the slightest push to make her fall. One push and then she was gone.

Michael almost felt bad that he hadn't had time to tell her that he was sorry. But even that would have been a lie.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Ugh, exhausting, right? I guess after writing and rewriting this chapter so many times, I've finally come to the conclusion that I can't really feel sorry for Michael and Heniel. They both deserve to be together (and, in a strange way) to not be together…if that makes any sense, haha.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have the chance, please leave me a review. I'm always ecstatic whenever I see new feedback for this fic. The next chap is in the works and should be posted in two weeks. Until then, take care and be well!


	20. Part 19 Wings

**Author's Note: **Ugh, I know. I'm such a bad author, not updating for over a month. I do have an excuse though. I've been sick. Chronic illness is not fun, believe me. Thanks for your patience! I'm sorry I couldn't have this chapter posted sooner.

And thank you to all my readers and my reviewers, **saichick **and **Rainyaviel**. Your constant support and encouragement has cheered me up on many a lousy day. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Part 19 Wings**

_Let me weep  
>my cruel fate,<br>and I sigh for liberty.  
>May sorrow break these chains<br>Of my sufferings, for pity's sake_

_ -Lascia ch'io Pianga by G.F. Handel_

They were sitting in the near dark. Helen had perched herself on the broad, flat arm of the futon with a cigarette. The cloying scent of tobacco sent wreaths smoke around her head and tinted her brown fingernails and her teeth yellow and slowly blackened her lungs. Sam sat on the futon next to her, the cuffs of his corduroys still wet from his spilled drink. They were both looking at the snow. It had come, as the weatherman had predicted, with gale force winds, but now the sky had settled, leaving them with only a flurry that shed fat flakes and hail.

Helen exhaled, spouting a stream of grey smoke like a dragon. Sam glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He thought she was starting to look tired, the old girl. Her pain was showing in the lines that ringed her mouth and creased the skin on her forehead. And suddenly, his animal instinct, his very human pity, moved him to speak.

"I feel sorry for you," Sam said. It was a revelation to him, but not to her, apparently.

Helen tilted her chin in his direction, her proud head bowed with what was certainly shame...and resignation. "Thanks. It's the least you could do."

"If you're going to be smart about it-"

"No." She flicked her hand, cinders falling to the carpet and dying with one last fitful burst of fire. "I'm grateful. I'm very grateful for you, Sam. I don't have any divine aspirations, unlike Lucifer, but I almost feel like tonight is my Gethsemane. My time to sweat blood and look for a way out. But there's never an easy exit. The only way is down, Sam. Straight down."

Sam stared at his knobby knees. He wondered if she was talking about Hell and damnation. He wondered if she really was that wicked…and if he could do something desperate that would save her.

Because against his will, against his determination and strength that had pushed him through the rain-kissed, Napalm jungles of Nam, he had been drawn into this…this cosmic feud. This apocalypse. But even if this was the end of the world, Sam figured it wasn't a magnificent spectacle. It wasn't bombs going off and the sky falling down. It was a tiny spark, a faint, pained exhaled. It was the small cinders dying on the carpet, one by one by one.

And there was only so much a man could do in this moment. And maybe there was nothing he could do for her.

"No more games," Sam said, trying to suck some spit into his dry mouth. "No more bullshit. You've been chasing me around all night. Just tell me…what the hell is it you want?"

He expected more sass from her. A jester's smile and a trickster's tongue. But she was silent and still and she just sat there, letting her cigarette burn down to the filter as the shreds of tobacco disintegrated into ash.

"I want help," Helen said at length. Sam thought she sounded like someone at an AA meeting, the kind of woman who tried to look daring and dominant in a neatly pressed suit and heels, but was really a mess inside. Except that Helen didn't seem so much of a mess inside as she was outside, with her curtain of brittle hair and her eyes that had supposedly glimpsed a Higher Power.

"I want to try to do the hardest thing I ever will," Helen continued. "I want to forgive Michael for what he did to me, because if I don't…"

"But it's all just words, isn't it?" Sam interrupted. He sensed that he was taking charge of the conversation and that the slack reins had been shifted over into his capable hands. Helen had been driving at a break-neck speed, reckless and wild. But he was slowing things down now. He was stopping them before they could wreck. "There's no real meaning, is there?"

Helen's eyes went sharp, as if he had stuck a much needed thorn in her side. "It depends," she said. "You tell me, Sam. If you say you forgive someone, what's it worth?"

"Well." He shrugged. "I imagine the person whose being forgiven might feel better."

"Like your mother, if you forgave her."

Sam didn't flinch at her jab, but passed it over with a disregard that surprised even him. "But I can't say that I'd feel better about it. Holding a grudge, there's a power that goes along with it. A sickness."

"Funny that you should describe it as a disease," Helen remarked. She paused to rap her knuckles against her breastbone, as if to prove that she was hollow inside. But Sam thought she had more heart than she gave herself credit for. And maybe that was the problem.

"Sometimes," Helen continued, "bad things can feel good. They feel _oh_ so good."

That got a smirk out of him, her emphasis on guilt, which she had rendered sensual. But Sam guessed it was all just an illusion. The truth of her guilt and shame and anger was ugly. Helen knew it, of course. And he knew it. It was a sad secret she had shared with him and he began to understand her desire to wash the slate clean.

"You know," he said. "If you can make yourself forgive this Michael, I mean really forgive him, you might feel a whole lot better. I think your anger is a crutch. It makes your guilt sweeter, just a little bit easier to swallow. But if you were to let go, let everything go, well hell, you could be free."

"Let go." Helen echoed. She seemed disturbed, as if the wind had reached in under the window sill and run its fingers along her spine. She shivered, but tried to hide her discomfort by stubbing out her cigarette in the bowl she kept her keys in by the door. "That's what I've always wanted. To let go. To be…free. And you think it's possible?"

"Almost anything is," he conceded, glancing at this haloless angel, this awkward paradox that had singled him out as a savior.

"Through God," Helen added. She bowed her head again and he witnessed her muted majesty, the light from the toll on the bridge giving her hair an unexpected sheen that could have been celestial, if he allowed his mind to wander.

"Maybe it's not about forgiveness," she said, uncrossing her legs as she stood. The back of her blouse was wrinkled from sitting.

"Well…" Sam shifted, vaguely uneasy. "I wouldn't go too far."

"Maybe it's only about being free," Helen amended. She was staring in the direction of the window and Sam followed her. They had a glimpse of the main street, the gutter already shrouded with snow, the cars rounded hills beneath the white.

"You know, Sam," she said, her mouth moving slowly as he read the words on her lips. "I don't necessarily have to forgive Michael to be free. It's not an easy out, just an end. Not the end he wants, of course. But maybe it's the one I want."

Sam was paralyzed for a moment. Fear had gripped him, along with a disappointment that was more shattering than stinging. He realized that he hadn't said enough. Or that he hadn't said the right thing…

Sam pushed himself to his feet, his legs shaky. "Wait," he begged. "Think about it."

She turned to him, her jaw loose, the muscles in her face gone slack. "Why?" she asked.

Sam didn't know. It was the answerless question, the one she had thrown at him because she knew he would fail and she didn't really want him to save her. Her fatalism was palpable. It had come with her down to the bar that evening, had sat with him at the piano and the shadow of it grew on the floor between them now.

Helen smiled and laughed faintly, the air hissing past her teeth. "All along," she murmured, "all along I've been blaming Michael for holding on. But all I had to do was open my hand. He can't have me if I won't let him. He can't find me if I'm free."

She was on the other side of him, edging into the center of the room where his vodka had long seeped into the carpet. The pressure of her heels brought up pools of liquid on the woven fabric. The light from the toll booth was behind her head.

"Helen," Sam called, not sure where she was going, only knowing that she was lost. "It would be a better end," he explained, "if you just forgave him."

But Helen was smiling still, smiling with tears running down her face. She moved, turning to open the window behind her and the cold was merciless as it flooded the room.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked as he watched her step out onto her fire escape. The snow closed around her shoes and ankles. Helen leaned back on the iron railing and gripped it with both hands.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out, Sam," she said. "I'm sorry for _you_, mostly"

"Don't be," he was about to say, but the wind silenced his voice way back in his throat.

Helen winked at him. "Want to see an angel fly?" she asked.

Sam didn't have time to step forward. Helen pitched herself backward, throwing all her weight into her shoulders. Her knees almost caught the railing as she went over and disappeared beyond the fire escape. The thud followed soon after, a heavy, wet sound of flesh hitting the pavement and bones bending against their will.

"My God," Sam said, snowflakes rushing into his mouth as he clambered out onto the landing. "My God," he said again, when he saw her lying twenty feet below with her neck broken.

He stood on the fire escape for a long time, trying to decide whether her outstretched arms made it look like she had wings or were his eyes deceived by the hot tears that making his lids gummy.

But in the end, Sam had to look away, the fragile humanity of the scene hitting him hard and cutting him deep when he realized that she hadn't given in, so much as given up. And that was the difference between him and Helen, really. Only a thin thread of faith that kept him standing there on the balcony, instead of following right after her.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Surprised? Confused? I know Helen's death was very sudden and unexpected, but I was rather deliberate about that. To me, suicides are probably one of the most confusing things in the world, at least to the people on the outside. Don't worry. I promise that Helen/Heniel has an explanation for her decision. In fact, she'll explain it to Michael in the next chapter. ;)

Thanks so very much for reading! If you can, please leave me a review! Receiving feedback for this fic makes me ridiculously happy. To those of you who are American (like me), I wish you a restful, peaceful and happy Memorial Day! And to everyone else, I hope you have a great weekend!

**P.S. **For those of you who are curious about the ending, I'll give you a hint. Think Dido and Aeneas in the Underworld. ^_^ Hehe. Sorry. I remember my Classical Lit class too fondly sometimes.


	21. Epilogue Dido and Aeneas

**Author's Note: **Well, here we are…the last chapter. Honestly, when I started this fic last year as a one-shot I never thought it would become a multi-chapter story. And I have you to thank, yes, you, my awesome readers and reviewers. Thank you so much for giving me the inspiration and creativity I needed to see this story through to the end. I am grateful for each and every one of you. It's been a great ride and I hope you enjoyed it. So, without further ado…the epilogue.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Epilogue Dido and Aeneas **

_When I am laid, am laid in Earth, may my wrongs create_

_No trouble, no trouble in thy breast_

_Remember me, remember me, but ah! Forget my fate._

_ -Dido's Lament by Henry Purcell_

Michael's head hit the diner floor. His world was eclipsed by encroaching darkness, by the last pitiful throbs of his broken heart, which had been pierced through by his brother's own lance. He had a last hectic vision of Gabriel towering above him. There were tears on his cheeks and his jaw had slackened under the weight of his grief. It was unjust, Michael thought vaguely as his last breaths rang hollowly in his ribcage. His one regret, was not having failed Charlie and her baby, but having forced his brother into fratricide, a sin unworthy of an archangel's soul, but good enough for Eve's son Cain.

And then there was Heniel, of course. How could he ever forget her…

Michael's eyes were rimmed in red and a sticky sort of blackness that mimicked tar, or a soul gone to waste. A copper coating of blood lingered in his throat and on his tongue and dripped from his lips. He remembered that she had kissed him once, never freely, but with a pained resignation that was so much like a prophecy. He wondered how she could have known, from the very first, that he would not be true. And he wondered how long it had taken her to forget the exact timber of his voice, the tenor of his words, when he told all of Heaven that he had not loved her.

If indeed she had forgotten at all…

Michael blinked. He could see the bloodstains on the ceiling of the diner, Gabriel's shadow obscuring the small handprints left behind by the possessed boy. His brother was a portrait of agony, holding his shoulders straight like the good soldier he was despite his guilt.

"You wanted to live like one of them," Gabriel intoned in a voice of practiced steadiness. He paused and tried to catch his breath, biting back a rising sob. "Now…you'll die like one of them…"

Michael blinked again and this time, the diner disappeared. He was bathed in a cool, soft darkness, the shadows frayed at the edges by the promise of light. He had been caught somewhere between the grey. He existed…and he didn't. The looseness of his soul, the freedom it had suddenly been given, no longer tethered to his body or mind, would have been frightening if he could have experienced the sensation of fear. The emptiness around him was indistinguishable as Michael had become part of the unfathomable, where the only certainty rested in non-existence…and the absence of his Father.

_Damnation_.

But it wasn't Hell that had welcomed him. Only oblivion. Michael did not know how long he remained there in the void and he only became aware of time itself again when things began to change. He was moving away from this space, passing through to another sphere, one that enveloped him and remolded his soul.

The process reunited him with his pain and doubt, with all the cares he had been able to relinquish for one brief, mindless stretch. But his faith had found him also and he could remember the precious joy that accompanied every sorrow, the memories he could never sacrifice and the devotion to his Father, which he had missed.

Michael moved through death and back into life, into a resurrection that carried with it a promise, a covenant from his Lord like the rainbow thrown out in the sky over Noah's ark.

Michael closed his eyes in relief. _I gave Him what He needed…_

The air turned sweet and perfumed. A fresh breeze made his reclaimed flesh tingle with all that was sacred and sanctified. Michael opened his eyes and found himself on the threshold. He stood just beyond the boundary of Heaven, at the fabled Gates that were not really gates at all. The area was open field. A single path wound it's away into the garden, where the trees rose like gables and the most blessed of souls wandered in unending happiness, in the Paradise they had created for themselves out of their Father's love.

Michael did not expect to be greeted upon his return. And he did not expect to see her waiting for him.

Heniel's wings fluttered when she saw him. Her feathers were the color of sea-foam, bruised only by the shadow of her long, plaited hair.

"I was sent to meet you," she said. There was a hint of reticence in her voice, a sour note that told Michael that she wasn't pleased with the duty.

His mouth opened in barely disguised shock. There were no traces of humanity left in Heniel. She had shed her earthly skin and been restored to herself. Michael frowned, surprised at his disappointment.

"I told you to wait for me," he said. "I told you that I would come for you when I could."

"Exactly," Heniel replied. She shifted, the flaps of her leather fauld fanning out against her muscled thighs. "You always assumed that I needed a savior. And you always assumed I needed you. How does it feel to be wrong, Michael? How does it feel to be so very wrong?"

"I don't feel anything in particular."

"Exactly," Heniel repeated with a grin. "And neither do I."

It was if the lance had been thrust through his heart again. Michael put his hand to his breast, not ashamed to show his pain, the hurt that she had casually inflicted.

Heniel's smile grew. There was no apology in her gaze nor on her lips, rather a sweet, sick satisfaction that came from what she had always wanted…revenge.

"You've won," he told her plainly.

Her grin twisted and changed into a scowl. "Don't say that. Not yet-"

"I never lied to you-"

"Once."

"But not now," Michael swore. He watched the fanciful play of light on her gleaming wings and heavy armor, which she wore with the ease of a second skin. It was difficult for him to remember that sad woman he had visited a few days ago. She had had stains on her teeth and cellulite on her legs and a smoker's cough that rattled deep in her chest. It was human frailty at its best, vice married to the flesh. Michael's eyes narrowed as he took in the oddness of her Heaven-given beauty. "He brought you home," he stated in mild disbelief.

"You thought I deserved to be damned, then?" she replied. Anger infused her cheeks with a violent flush. "You thought I didn't deserve the final reward of Paradise despite my repentance. Forgiveness is not a concept that sits easily with you, is it Michael? You cannot bear to think that it wasn't me He found disappointing, but you."

Michael's tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He hated that he had an eye for a weakness, but not for her strength. She had wisdom that exceeded is. She had a simple mind that avoided delusion and instead settled for honesty.

Heniel had never lied to herself. But Michael had.

He couldn't apologize to her, couldn't try again and again, even though he had forever, even though he would find a way to somehow make her listen.

"How?" he asked her lamely.

"Did I die?" Heniel's brows jumped up her forehead.

"Was it by accident?"

"Of course not," she replied. "Although I wasn't necessarily tired of living."

_Suicide_. The word was foul even in his mind.

Heniel laughed. "Wouldn't it have been even better," she said, "if I hadn't ended up here instead? You never would have seen me again, Michael. I wouldn't have let you. I didn't want to let you…" She trailed off and with a jolt of horror, he realized the heart of her sickness, the very depth of her hate for him.

Heniel had been willing to damn herself just to punish him. She had been willing to endure an eternity away from their Lord, if only so Michael would have to endure an eternity away from her.

It took him a moment to realize how sad that made him. And it took him longer to realize that he no longer had her love.

But there was hope. There always had to be hope. In his blindness, in the heat of his love that had not subsided, that had haunted him since the day she was stripped of her wings and pushed from Paradise, Michael reached out towards her.

"Heniel!" he cried.

But she turned from him. She covered her face with her hands and walked away.

**The End  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Not a happy ending, or is it? To be honest, I don't think Michael and Heniel deserve a happy ending. In case you were wondering about the epilogue title and the last line, they were both inspired by the love story of Dido and Aeneas in Virgil's _The Aeneid. _Dido, the Queen of Carthage, falls desperately in love with the hero Aeneas, only to have him break things off rather unceremoniously to continue on his quest. She ends up committing suicide and when the two meet in the Underworld, Dido refuses to forgive her former lover. She simply turns her back on him and walks away.

Again, thank you all so much for sticking with this story! I've had a lot of fun with it and I hope you did too. Until next time! Take care!


End file.
